The Great 
Companions 

Henry Bryan Binns 



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„ ^ ^3 :V •^ ' 



The Great Companions 



By the Same Writer, 

Moods and Outdoor Verses {out of print). 1902. 

A Life of Walt Whitman. 1905. 

Abraham Lincoln. 1907. 

Botticelli. 1907. 

For the Fellowship. Parts I and IL 1905, 1906. 



The Great 
Companions 

Henry Bryan Binns 



New York 

B. W. Huebsch 

1911 



All rights reserved 



Us /OS" 



Contents 




Introductory .... 


page 
7 


The Fellowship of the Earth 


8 


The Voice of Humanity 


i6 


Tree-Life 


22 


The Coming of Man 


. 31 


The City 


• ^1 


One of London's Lovers 


. 45 


Pioneers 


• 51 


Love's Body 


. 58 


For Comrades and Lovers . 


. 68 


Liberty 


. 8o 


Vista 


. %^ 


Envoi 


. . 96 



Bibliographical Note. — Several of the paragraphs 
and verses printed below have already appeared in an 
earlier form, viz., I. v., II. i. iii. III. viii. xi., IV. iii., VIII. 
vii. viii., IX. ii. xvi. xxi, X. iii., XI. iii. vii. ix. in Parts I 
and II oiFor the Fellowship, published respectively in 1905 
and 1906 by Headley Bros., and C. W. Daniel, and 
VIII. xviii., X.'viii., XL ii., in Friends' Fellowship Papers. 

Nos. III. iii., IV. viii., VIII. v., appeared respectively 
in the British Friend, New Age and Academy, and to the 
proprietors of those journals I hereby beg to offer thanks 
for permission to reprint them. Also, to my friend 
Horace Traubel, who first published earlier versions of 
VII. ii. iii. vi., VUI. i. and IX. i., in the Conservator. 



Introductory 

THE verse-makers contrive how they may pair 
together most admirably, as they were lovers, 
certain words whose chime is pleasant to the ear : they 
set between them the due intervals : they weave them 
thus into their theme. 

But every poet hears, flowing amid the silence, the 
living intricate rhythm of the immortal song ; its words 
progress together in a cosmic fellowship, inseparable, 
moving forward in the liberty of a living thing. 



I. The Fellowship of the Earth 

All beauty dwells in the Earth's heart for Her children : 
They are the poets and lovers : they are the rich ; 
Nothing they own hut Her. 

COME out among the bracken and the birches, and 
share in their dehght ! Sprung out of the earth 
into the hberty of the wind and sunshine, the joy that 
gives them grace, the wonder of their undeniable Hfe, 
is not for them alone. 

If they green and glimmer in the sun, if they shiver 
and leap in the wind and sing and play in it, if they 
rejoice in the Earth and in Her fellowship, — they beckon 
also to us, though we be strangers, they welcome us de- 
claring, out of the same earth are we sprung, kissed by 
the same great breezes, cherished by the sun, and in the 
same joy born. 

IT is a last morning in May : alight air moves : already 
the hot sun is half-way up the sky: his breath 
steals in upon us. 

Ah, to lean upon the fence and feel his breath steal in : 
to feel the dewy meadows all ashimmer with light: to 
let the feet of our fancy wander through the deUcious 
grass into the shadow of the great oaks that stand up 
in the hedges, while overhead all heaven is as full of 
song as sunshine ! 

8 



The Fellowship of the Earth 9 

But whither, ah, whither away upon this whiff of 
summer out of the high thorns ? 

On, on ! For here the passers-by bring errands with 
them and will not let us forget. On ! till the good 
road gives out upon a rough wild common of furze and 
brakes and bushes, and the scrub sallow dreamily 
flying her cotton -seeds upon the soft breeze, and, thick 
as blown spray, the scent from foaming hills of haw- 
thorn. 

On, on ! Till out of reach of the road babbles a brook 
among its alders : birches, too, lean over it : it is bright 
and dark in their shadows : ready it runs to wash 
away the dulness of mere thoughts and of importances, 
baptizing one anew into the vivid life of Earth. 

IS it so difficult, even here among the birches, to 
become a Child again ? 

How good it were to lay the pride and stiffness of this 
manhood down ; to relinquish it all, to lie back into the 
arms of the divine reality, onto the breast of the Great 
Mother, and be embosomed again, if it might be, in 
Life, — a child, a little babe, sufficed in Her ! 

In Her bosom are the sources of joy: upon Her breast, 
if we might win thither, is rest and refreshing for our 
need. 

My heart tells me She hath pity for Her babes, because 
they have forgotten Her touch ; because they have grown 
so busy and dry and stiff they cannot any more believe 
that their bodies were made on purpose to absorb joy and 
health and power, to receive and to communicate these, 
and their spirits the same ; because, while She is offering, 
they are for ever closing themselves up and up and up 



lo The Great Companions 

into their pride and striving, till now they can accept 
of Her next to nothing at all. 

AND why should we be choking up our minds with 
the thoughts of books ? Indeed, they are very 
well, but there are others better than they: thoughts 
that spring up in the heart of a man without his summons, 
as hfe springs up in the earth at the coming of Spring. 

Book thoughts are well enough, but besides there are 
thoughts of the earth and sky : thoughts that are clouds 
in the west, and bees on the moor, and stars in the 
grass : — of quietness and of the Soul of All. 

ONCE, long ago, a messenger came calHng to me, 
" Put all the rest away, and live with me : I am 
the keeper of eternal hfe ! " But I could not go with 
him, though 't was Hfe that I was seeking, for I did not 
know his voice. 

Anon came another and another with hke words, but 
" No ! " said my heart, " you are not the one I wait 
for, you are not he that shall carry me home." 

Lonely then I lay and waited long. 

Till, presently, one summer morning, I saw the trees 
and bracken beckoning to me, that I should make me 
ready : and I understood and was quiet, and prepared 
my heart for joy. 

Like the morning breeze out of a primrose coppice 
the wonder caught me. 

I heard One saying, " He awakes." 

I saw above me the immortal face of Nature full of 
love: and I knew, and cried with a quick glad cry, 
*' Mother, my Mother ! " 



The Fellowship of the Earth 



1 1 



The leaves of the grass touched me with loving wel- 
come : " Brother," they said, " you are come home at 
last ! " 

AND now, in this fragrant heather, I lie back and 
breathe-in peace. 

For I am become once more a babe upon the Mother's 
breast, and the Giver of bread is the Giver of that also 
without which Hfe flags. 

Out here in the quiet, come thoughts that are full of 
peace, for they grow up out of the earth : they are not 
weary to me as are my own struggling thoughts : nay, 
they are Hers, and feed me. 

And nearer, nearer, nearer, — ah, though I see Her not, 
how near draws She. 

IF we could but understand for a moment what it is 
She is saying, and what is She that gives us life, 
out of whose body, as out of an infinite treasury, wonders 
spring up for ever : — if we could but hear, if we could but 
understand, we too perhaps might speak Her words and 
give life to immortal things ! 

But chatter, chatter ! O busy brain, if you would but 
be still ! There is Something here, even now, making 
divine creative chords, the music of life that I am long- 
ing to hear, while j^ou must chatter, chatter. 

Though you are in the presence of God Himself, you 
must go on prinking yourself before your glass, playing 
your clever little pranks, laughing at your quips and 
salhes, eager for the rattle of that foohsh voice, O busy 
wandering, childish wit ! 



12 The Great Companions 

BUT who are you, tall friend, with winged and hairy 
body and slow-uncurling tip ? 

Who are you, tall friend at my knee, springing up 
out of the mould, eager for soaring, lithe beautiful child 
of the Earth ? 

They call you bracken, and you are a multitude, dear 
and delightful to me, ever inviting me with your wel- 
come : but, though I lie among you gratefully, I do not 
know you: not though by touch you seem my kin, 
reminding me of mysteries, mysteries of my own I 
cannot guess — I do not know who you are, tall friend. 

But I hold you to be some spirit angelical, clad, as 
for me, in green raiment, and for my questionings em- 
bodied in fair form. 

For you, too, methinks, I must be a mysterious 
presence that lingers and passes you even as the wind 
passes. 

And to myself this day I am strange : I am not what 
my senses ghbly declare : what I am I know not. 

But something in you leans to me and discovers it- 
self, and in me, something leaning to you, gives my soul 
hints beyond thought. 

Perhaps, in this soft evening air, something utters 
itself through the flesh of us both, and is said out of 
hearing, — that Something within us which our senses 
can neither tell to one another nor understand, but which 
yet desires speech and hearing. 

Perhaps it is You, perhaps it is Me : perhaps it is heard 
in the ear of the Earth. 

Perhaps our Mother, from whom we are sprung, the 
dear and wise One to Whom in a httle we shall return, 
will presently tell us our names together, weaving them 



The Fellowship of the Earth 1 3 

into Her song that men call death, and in Her telling 
them thus we shall understand. 

IT is under the sky one rests, lying among the leaves 
at evening upon the breast of the Earth, drinking 
in at every pore the peace of Her vast life. 

But in my lair among the leaves, with the evening 
joy about me hke embracing arms, I hear a word of 
those afar, those who are born into another world of 
streets, who never even breathe the sweet free air. 

It asks if I am doing aught for them, and whether I 
have any fellowship with them at all. 

Then I hear a word within me, a word out of the Earth 
upon whose breast I He : " Loving me," it says, " you 
love them also, all My children, however far estranged : 
if you would truly love them, any and all, first must you 
learn to love by loving Me." 

AND again She says : "To give, but to give Hfe. 
" To give, but as I give, not that which is good for 
some desire, but that which is good for hfe. 

" Many a hunger will look out upon you from their 
eyes, but it is for life's longing you are come : to give them, 
if you may, what is enough for that : to say to them, in 
your way, the word that I am saying, answering together 
all the needs of all My children." 

WHEN first I realized how far we all are straying 
from the common hfe of the Earth, I was afraid : 
but I heard Her voice within my heart cry, ** Come unto 
Me! " 
Then though many another heard it not, I knew 



14 The Great Companions 

that it was calling every one, and that each in his hour 
would answer, though it should be but unwilHngly, as 
when men render back their bodies to the clay. 

And now that I have discovered that You love me. 
Mother, and are feeding me with joy, so that my hfe 
may wholly be a child of Yours, I begin to feel the love 
that is in Your heart calling back into Your bosom all 
Your children, eagerly calling them again into Your 
fields that are lonely for men. 

And it seems to me that all who love You cannot cease 
to call them back. 

WHEREFORE to you that are poor and have 
nothing to give, to you that are crushed under 
your nothingness, to you, reverently, I bring news good 
to carry, in one word, brief to say, from the Mother of 
men. 

It is the word a woman says, the word of a mother to 
her little one, nay, it is no word at all, it is herself, her 
motherhood. 

Little ones, it is no word I am bringing you when I 
bring you to the breast of the Mother that aches with 
inexpressible love for you. 

AND to many a greater one, I can hear, as it were, 
Her words: " Who are you that claim Me for 
your Mother seeking the essential life, but would fain 
keep you separate, shrinking from this, spurning at that, 
desiring the other ? 

"You do as a child, childishly. 
" My life is bigger than this, it accepts, and understands, 
and is whole. 



The Fellowship of the Earth 1 5 

" When you are come into it and all things begin to be 
yours, you will not be dismayed to find the ugly and the 
sick, the bad and sad and mad are yours among the 
rest ; for there will be that in you so antiseptic, vital and 
sound you will know that nothing can neutralize or 
extinguish it. 

"Touching the body of corruption with your own flesh, 
you will be neither disgusted nor afraid : you will not need 
any longer to companion only with the beautiful and 
pure, for now you are in My hfe you are become a 
quickener of the dead and must seek whom you may 
quicken, a purifier of the foul and must go down into the 
mire that you may create beauty out of it. 

" The life of man is a seed that must have the Earth to 
die into, if ever it is to arise miraculously and come rejoic- 
ing up into the sunlight. 

" And when you are at last alive, you will accept all 
with confidence : and Death too, will be acceptable to 
you, and Love, which is as Death is: when you have 
learnt how to accept, you will not be anxious any more 
about Love and Death. 

"Then, being anxious no more, you will stretch out 
your hand over disorder, disease and fear ; you will 
reach out your hand to those that dwell in them : you 
will become one with them, hand in hand, and pour your 
life into their veins and take their life to run in yours : 
and you will be glad because of them, till your joy and 
singing become theirs. 

" Because you have life, they also shall live ; for you 
are no longer afraid of the fear that holds them captive, 
nor of the love that gives release." 



II. The Voice of Humanity 

I HEARD the voice of Humanity saying : " When 
you turn aside from cities and all the ways of 
men — from their gardens, their orchards, their fields and 
their thoughts — ^flinging yourself at last upon some 
woodland floor to gaze into the drowsing movement of 
the boughs and listen to the birds after the rain ; when 
you turn away from cities to the wild, what is it you 
are seeking ? 

"My child, it is not solitude, it is fellowship that you 
seek, to escape from men into the hfe of Man, whereof 
the woods ever retain a part." 

— The voice of Humanity saying : *' Look deep, O 
child, into the eyes of the creatures ; seek through all 
their tissues the soul of the green leaves ; through 
their thick-hurrying notes the life of the birds, and 
through Her answer to thy feet the meaning of the 
Earth. 

" Gaze, listen and search long, and thou shalt know at 
last My face from all things answering to thine eyes. 
My heart making reply to thine. 

"And in that hour not alone shalt thou perceive Me 
in wildernesses afar from men, out of their eyes also will 
I answer thee, and thou shalt know My voice among 
their words. 

"Nay, out of thine own body, hidden from thee so 

16 



The Voice of Humanity 17 

long, shall the glory of My joy shine forth. With blank 
face no more will thy skin greet thee, nor will thy mem- 
bers any longer wantonly rebel or stupidly obey, but 
all rejoicing together will endow thee with the mystery 
that now thou seekest in the woods." 

And I heard the voice of Humanity saying : " My 
child, hast thou given thyself to Me ? Henceforward 
thou shalt have no satisfaction but in Me. 

" Henceforward there is that in thee that will not give 
thee peace until thou give it back to Me. 

" I do beset thee with desire of Me, for thee have I 
desired and chosen. 

" Whether among the bracken or among men, I will 
come calling thee, and needs must thou make answer. 

" I have given a new sweetness to thy life and a new 
meaning, for I have made thee Mine. 

"I have set a mark upon thee that all creatures know, 
to love thee or to hate thee for My sake." 



IT was a Sunday of a wild October storm, the trees 
were swept, the rain streamed on the windows, 
the smoke puffed baffled from the chimney throat. 

But sitting by my fireside, turning away from words 
and plans to seek the sources of life, quietness overtook 
me : quietness wherein, after a long perplexity, I rested 
and drew breath, over and over again, filling my spirit 
with it, feeling the breadth of hfe, feeUng its mighty 
principle within me. 

And it was all about me as a divine fellowship, showing 
me in a flash the need in the hearts of men, the hunger 



1 8 The Great Companions 

that is their unrest ; hunger and need for something 
necessary whereof as yet, I thought, they have no word 
to tell its form, even unto themselves. 

No word, only the dumb bewildered longing, groping, 
clutching of bhnd hands for something they have not, 
only pain, striving, wrath of unbelief, — the life in them 
mere life's perplexity : every one offering to other this 
or that thing for solace, but none, not one uttering 
the word of quietness ! 

And yet, if none were uttering it, how then should I 
have heard ? 

IT is as though, on wanderers' quests, over all the 
wide face of the world and through every country 
of thought, we had travelled and toiled, till we are 
become well-versed in the various knowledge of things : 
and now, here at home, there waits for us the best of 
all : a knowledge that is not found in going to and fro, 
such knowledge as a tree has of the Earth. 

Now after much thinking and wide-searching, we may 
find it here, and by a very narrow way : in a moment 
of faith, gathering the life of all the soul up into single- 
ness, and with that point piercing the shell of things, 
breaking the surface to spread out and grow within the 
Earth. 

AND who shall sHght that knowledge ? 
To live deep, where thought and sense do 
not disturb, is to become master of them, to pass beyond 
the pale of death, the questioning of immortaHty. 

To gain that vantage-ground, to enter into that 
place, is, in so far, to realize the victory towards which 



The Voice of Humanity ig 

all strivings and desires reach forward ; to win some- 
thing imperishable, inalienable henceforward from 
humanity ; and what prize is better worth the quest ? 

OTHERS, indeed, are pressing forward to claim 
from the wilderness and the bog, now this, now 
that new field for the service of Man : others are winning 
back this criminal or that bUnd self-satisfied fool to 
the full hfe of Humanity. 

But we, we also, are we not pressing forward, winning 
out of the unknown, fields for the feet of Man, fields for 
his spiritual food ? 

Into the darkness, perilously adventuring, are we 
not catching ghmpses of Him who keeps the secret of 
our soul ? 



THINK how life -long the labourers toil, till broken 
at last they are flung back into the earth where - 
into went their toil, for you and me ! 

Think of London, and how, street upon street for 
leagues, without a wood or field, children are born for 
labour and to die in shame, for you and me ! 

How narrow, grey, meaningless seem their lives, 
unless in your life and in mine the breadth and colour 
and meaning be for them ! 

Unless out of each day we dedicate, if only one stern 
hour, to the toil of the soul, the conquest of thought, 
the deepening of our consciousness for them who toil 
for us ; that we who call us men may have our part 
among the people. 



2 The Great Companions 

BE not anxious about the body your love shall take : 
but know that, when your Hfe is indeed become 
love, it will take the body proper to its power, and 
coming and going among mortals, it will make itself 
known. 

Let your mind and body be truly dedicate to Love, 
so that all other motives may be dying out and being 
forgotten, but Love ever increasing : till all your pur- 
poses and thoughts and deeds find issue, as they had 
their source, in the abiding life that men call " Love " 
but God only, in whom it is perfect, knoweth its true 
compass and is its name. 

Choose nothing for yourself, but abide the choice of 
Love : say nothing for an answer nor to fill up the 
measures of silence, save as Love impels : so will your 
life have judgment and much space in it ; its thoughts 
and deeds will be sure. 

Keep the feasts of the soul, lest you be ingulfed in 
occupations and forget. 

And though you may not turn aside out of the ways 
of men, yet by weariless patience shall you find, even in 
the midst of the press, spaces for solitude. Nay, and if 
these be absent, yet, if you are ever seeking Love, He 
will find you out in the midst ; He will not pass you by. 

It is better to seek Him in the press, than going 
aside into a solitude, to forget His signs and so mistake 
His presence. Yea, even in your sohtude He will not 
separate you from any, but will bring you into com- 
munion with All. 

Learn to wait upon Love in all matters of your life, 
so that at last it be not you — the " you " you were — 
but He — the you that is now come up into being — who 



The Voice of Humanity 2 i 

acts and lives : for only so can you come into full 
reality. 

And being come thither, then all the old Hfe will live 
again transfigured, whole, its meaning plain before you : 
not one part only, surviving the destruction of the rest, 
but the soul holding all in possession to use and to fulfil, 
moving through life in the liberty of one that has its 
secret, of one whose deeds are large and sure. 



III. Tree Life 

THAT clump of aconites in the border — tight yellow 
globes under the cloud, golden honeyed goblets 
under the sun! 

This hillside too — there is something here that opens 
out its heart when the sun finds it, to hide it again in 
the shadow. 

No blossoms yet, nor leaves upon the birches : the 
brakes are but the remnants of the year gone by, yet 
when the sun is on them, already they rejoice ! 

The doors of the cells stand wide, the pores of the 
earth are open : everything forgets its past rejoicing 
in the present. 

Our hearts no longer can enfold and hide whatever 
is within them : they open, yet timidly — for either they 
were covering up some sorrow or some shame — but 
" Rejoice ! " cries the sun and " Behold ! " he cries, 
and they forget and look out. 

Then he enters those chambers ; he covers up their 
dead with life, and fills them with its fragrance. 

He goes ; the cloud draws down again ; the petals 
close themselves : but in the chamber is a change ; 
its occupant is never quite so sad again once she has 



Tree Life 23 

forgotten her sadness, opening her door to the February 
sun. 

EMBRACING Spirit ! Even as the springing plant 
unto the air of summer, so would my heart 
abandon itself to Thee ! 

Yet would I be none other than myself, giving my- 
self to Thee : from Thee I claim the fulness of my being. 

Sometimes indeed, I deceive myself, demanding that 
I be wholly converted out of this my self, and into Thee : 
that I may altogether be quit of and abandon this 
little me, and become the measureless wind I love, or 
the all-flooding Light. " Poor Thing," say I, "it were 
better for you to perish into that glory of air and sun ! 

*' Little foolish nothing of a leaf, cease your bewil- 
dered flutterings of effort, and sink again into the 
universal earth : give up your being of an hour into the 
immortal air." 

Often, as may perchance a leaf on some great tree, I 
become weary of my leafhood : and when the sap begins 
to rise in the old trunk, flowing out along the branches, 
invading my veins, I sigh, *' O Sap, divine hfe of me, 
surely I myself am no separate leaf at all, surely I am 
only what Thou art ! 

"It is Thou art really I, for Thou art my very life. 

" Let me know nothing but Thee : let all my hfe be 
purely Thine ! " 

Then for a moment I know nothing but the flowing 
Sap, and it is I : but the wind comes a-calhng, and I 
remember I am a leaf, without whom he could not 
communicate his message to my tree. 

Sometimes also, in my folly, I speak in this wise — 



24 The Great Companions 

(and again I am as a leaf upon a tree whose flowers are 
far apart and splendid, of whose rare blossoming we 
speak together. We call the flowers by name, each 
one as it were a god ; but for this branch of leaves or 
that, there is one special flower which is its own) — 
when the Sap, in its flowing, reaches me, I say, " Flower, 
Flower, Flower ! though I see thee not now, yet am I 
sure thou growest somewhere upon my tree, and art the 
meaning and the glory of my tree ! 

" Nothing am I unless I be joined to Thee, Heavenly 
One ! Mere leaf that I am, I worship Thee. 

** There is a hfe in me that is for Thee : I would all 
else of me might perish, and this alone might hve, that 
wholly I might hve for Thee ! " 

And again I cry : " O Flower ! I also might have 
been as Thou — I that am stunted and thwarted and 
become but a leaf, in whom the passion is bitter that in 
thy nectaries is sweet, and bHnd the senses that look out 
of thy bright face : — how long must I vainly cry for 
this my leafhood to be changed to fulness such as 
Thine ?/' 

But sometimes — whether out of the morning-dews 
or out of the heart of the Tree or of my own essential 
leafhood, I know not — sometimes there come to me 
sure pulsings of Earth-wisdom to content me with my 
lot. 

And the sap in my veins murmurs peace that is better 
than promise, and I know it is good to be a leaf. 

I know the tree is not for the flower, not yet the leaf 
for the flower, but leaf and flower have their hfe, and 
both together are for the tree. 



Tree Life 25 



flUR God is like a Tree 

Upon whose twigs we grew. 
Knowing not it was He 
The leafy summer through : 
But now the Autumn gales 
Blow, and our leafhood fails — 
Our leafhood yet not We — 
Soon shall it shrivelling fall: 
Yet Winter slays not all — 
Something lives on the Winter through. 
Something upon whose twigs we grew : 
While from its leafhood free 
Our life withdraweth deep 
Into the Earth to sleep : 
— Oitr God is like a Tree. 



UPON this world-old Tree, we are as leaves that in 
the gales of Time flutter upon the branches that 
endure, and share and feed the tree-Hfe. 

In the season of Faith breaks the Tree into flower, 
and aU the nurture treasured of old within the stock 
into one blossom goes. 

Surely such a blossom was Jesus the Christ, renewer 
of Humanity, teller of the secret of Man — the secret 
hidden save in His face of love. His life. His death, that 
faUing of the impregnate seed back into earth for Man's 
new birth of consciousness. 

The season of Faith draws on again ; the old Tree 
is about to bloom even as of old : the virtue in the sap 
is moving, desire grows potent, and divine love flows 
along the branches, stirring behind the leaves. 



2 6 The Great Companions 

AND on this wise murmurs the Life within me : — 
"Be not content with any experience or dis- 
covery of yours until it bear fruit in the Tree, for 
otherwise it is not yet your own. 

'* Beware of praise, which is the same as misunder- 
standing : but love is of the fellowship, even the love 
of the foolish, and it is your life. 

"Live in the midst where life is. 

" Keep close as may be to the common lot, strong in 
the stock of the great Tree : then in your season 
shall you bear fruit therein, and renew its life in you. 

" You are not for ever to remain a bearer only of leaves 
that fall and decay ; but a bearer of fruit shall you be, 
that after it is fallen springs up anew with increase." 

FOR awhile I supposed it was this and this, but I 
know now what it was I wanted, and I shall be 
a fool if I give not all for That. 

In That all else roots and forms, becomes alive and 
has permanence : in That, Humanity has His being, 
and we in Him : He is as a great Tree securely set in 
That. 

When I am aware of That then I live : between 
whiles it is as though I only dreamed. 

For That is much more than you or I : and its life 
is more than ours. 

When I fall out of That, and live only as of old, 
then am I weary and desolate, as an exile far from 
home. 

But to awake in That, is to be come up anew into life : 
to be doubly born. 

By the mortal birth we begin to live, putting forth 



Tree Life 27 

out of unconsciousness, as it were blossoms upon a tree, 
craving they know not what of the sunshine. 

But when their Hfe is fertihzed it forms anew within 
them and thenceforward is secure, continuing though 
the flowers perish, drawing nourishment awhile from 
the tree, and at last, when it is fallen, out of the Earth 
itself. 



AS the seed-spirit grows, choosing from earth and 
air its nourishment, taking of air and earth all 
that it can embody, — so every soul, by faith. 

Tiny and solitary, the soul is as a dead grain of dust, 
till through the dumb world-walls that close it round, 
its kindred call it in the awakening rain. 

Then it discovers all about it kindly substances, and 
feeds and feeds on them. 

So, as it feeds, come all things : with perplexing 
faces new and strange, they offer it themselves. 

Slowly, and one by one, the master-soul greets all, 
refusing none for ever, but taking each in season : till, 
like the mustard seed, it builds a Tree whose roots clasp 
round the Earth while all the stars twinkle between its 
branches. 



MARK how lithe are the trees, adventuring in the 
gale that will perhaps reave presently a limb 
away. 

Mark the sea-men too, how free and noble a race, 
or the mothers of many child-births. 



2 8 The Great Companions 

And beware how you ensure yourself and those you 
love against life and its perils ! 



My heart, it is the heart of some good timber tree 

That loves its place in the -fields or by the wayside set ; 

Rain and sunshine it loves, but most the dear earth under. 

MY heart is as the heart of the tree when the sea- 
wind fills it with boding cries, rending its 
branches, tugging up its roots, the very earth yielding 
to let it go ; and the storm to a hurricane rising, with 
deafening shout and roar as of an overwhelming ocean, 
crashing comes to claim it. 

My heart is as the tree's heart then, confused and 
desolate, hating the sea, to its hold in the dear earth 
chnging with innumerable torn and bleeding rootlets. 

" My God ! My God ! " it cries, " Nourisher and 
sustainer of my life, I will not yield my living hold on 
Thee-! Let not the stormy fiend tear me away from 
Thee ! " 

I feel a still voice thrill among my chattering boughs 
down even to my writhing roots, that says : " The 
Sea, wherein there seems nor rest nor root is Mine : 
there shalt thou swim and bathe thyself in Me ! " 

My heart is as the tree's heart fain to grow securely 
in ^ny place : but now the wind bids me prepare for 
wandering and the new uses of strange adventure : 
I must take the sea-ways: last of all I must be the 
food of fire, ashes and smoke and flame. 

And I rebel : I cry to Earth my God : till, chiding 



Tree Life 29 

at my fears, a voice will say : " God is the living 
Earth, the living Air : God is the living Sea : God 
is the living Fire. 

"As Earth thou trustest Him : trust thyself to the 
Sea, as do all wanderers bidden forth of Him : yea, 
to the fire, that would not hunger for thee did it not 
love thee well ! 

" Till, letting go thy flickering ashes and soft smoke 
to blow into the wilds of space, thy spirit breathe the 
breath of God again ! " 

CAST loose unto the deep if you would know what 
life is, life that consists in taking perils, not 
eluding them, of mastering wind and wave, not riding 
at an anchor. 

You were not made for safe and silent waters : your 
sails and sheets and timbers are for the shouting winds 
and rhythmic billows. 

Cast loose then, every inch of you was framed for 
bold sea-faring ! 

Ah, why now would you dally any longer ? Why 
cling now any more — as though you were no ship, 
but only some dead log — ^haunting these wharves and 
jetties ? 

I think you are still dreaming of your fields and 
forests : still turning wistfully to them, still longing 
for the dear earth in which so long you rooted. 

Ha ! Ha ! Do you not hear the wind laugh ? Do 
you not hear the waves a-calling you ? 

They have a secret for you, if you will but go : out 
beyond the breakwater they will tell you wonderful 
things. 



30 The Great Companions 

For now you belong out there : out there everything 
will be telling you the new creature that you are. 

NOW I will launch out into the sea, voyaging with 
my sails, and going forth in faith from these 
safe shores, these inland waters I have known. 

I carry an Unknown Voyager whose errand I know 
not, save that He crieth to me continually as I go, 
" Have faith, httle brother ! Have faith ! " 



IV. The Coming of Man 

I HEARD the wind blow out of the West, singing 
the song of Democracy, crying to men over-sea 
the challenge of Man. 

O wind, crying deliverance, carrying the young 
moon like a sickle of steel in your hand, I hear in your 
breath the name that is in my heart, the name of Him 
that is sure ! 

Indifferent, across the innumerable years, and now 
across the hurrying, quarrelling nations, you cry His 
advent : and out of the eyes of men, with glancings 
surer than steel, comes the answer of Him that 
awakes. 

Painfully, with bewilderment, out of long patience 
and labour, in one and one, even now He awakes. 

SoHtary and far-sundered are they, with unsatisfied 
groping hands seeking about the world for their com- 
rades : but when they hear you calling out of the West, 
and see that white sickle of harvesting in your hand, 
then know they one another. 

You call, and at the touching of hands, the flashing 
of eyes together, runs the thrill of some great life through- 
out their being, shattering their separation into one 
enorbing joy. 

Beyond one another now they behold Man, the awful 
One that was to be, who is at last awaking : and in 

31 



32 The Great Companions 

their hearts from West to East they hear you crying 
defiance, death, and the loyalty of comrades. 

SOMETIMES I am a man very busy with tasks, urged 
on by duty or ambition, by this goad or by that, 
or whole or sick, eager or weary : and sometimes, no 
man at all : only and wholly, in my consciousness, 
substance of the Body Divine, all that I do and am a 
mystery. 

WHEREFORE, it is not serving on committees 
that I Hve my life, but going thither of an 
evening, alone upon the road, under the full white 
moon who walks among the clouds beyond the bowing 
tree-tops, while all the little houses disappear into the 
light she floods toward the West, filling the high- arched 
heaven brim-full up to the stars : for then I remember 
what I was forgetting : I come back face to face with 
life again, and what we are. 

Looking outward through mine eyes into that flood 
of hght, I see my soul as in a glass reflected, infinite 
as the stellar height, full as that river running toward 
the West. 

Gazing into the mystery there throbs within my 
body the pulse of the unseen almighty Son of Man, 
filling my world with worship. 

WE are a band of comrades scattered over the 
world, hardly seeing from so far one another's 
faces, hardly reaching one another's hands : — 

Yet are we inseparable, hvingly co-ordinate, one 
Body, the Body of Thy^fellowship, O Thou, nameless, 



The Coming of Man 3 3 

divine Companion, in Whom alone, we, scattered, 
apart and each one separated to some task the others 
cannot share, find our unfaiHng strength and our abiding 
home. 

Nay, Friend, Thou art not without a name among 
those that meet in Thee, for each by some name pas- 
sionately invokes Thee, Thou answering each. 

Yet when we speak of Thee with one another, name- 
less art Thou ; or if we name Thee, then is the name 
but as our fancy's finger pointing at Thee. 

But Thou no shadow art, no fancy ; Blood of our 
Body, Soul of our Fellowship, so near so sure we need 
no name for Thee ! 

THUS sayest thou, Lord of Life : "I also, am as 
a man, into the deep of things jetting mine 
own electric will, begetting children. 

" I also, am as a man : in every age, some have I taken 
into solitudes — loving, and yet apart from men — chosen 
to be my members of begetting, vehicles of my passion. 

"Not children for themselves do they beget: but 
through them, I, sowing effectual seed amid her clay, 
cause the Earth to conceive of Me anew. 

"Of old, prophets were they, and still they shall be 
prophets : immortally their words bear life to them 
that wait them. 

" I also, am as a man, terrible fierce with life : like a 
fiery sword, my chosen pierces the Unknown to procreate 
sons of Mine. 

" Unashamed shall he be, for he is Mine: undismayed 
though seized by mad possession ; cruelly plunged 
into the body of Fellowship with cleaving power to 



34 The Great Companions 

break it, yea, to slay it by the birth of that which I 
beget. 

I also, am as a man ! O man, lonely, unsatisfied, 
seeking still your place, dare you to find your mystic 
place in Me ? " 



" T, MAN, wanderer, stranger among the creatures — 

A most among men a wanderer and a stranger — 
out of your dreams awake. 

" You were dreaming the old dreams that prove them- 
selves true, that are true till I awake — dreams of use- 
fulness, dreams of attainment to this end or that ; 
selfish, unselfish dreams ; of days gone-by, of days 
to-be — to you they were not dreams, they proved 
themselves real — but I awake in you, I, Man. 

'* At the turning of a page, at the coming of a woman 
or a man, stranger or comrade seeming, but no more 
a stranger or a comrade, suddenly, after so profound 
a slumber that you knew not I was there asleep within 
you, — I awake. 

" I take your eyes, and look out through them on a 
world you never saw, and laugh for joy. 

" I take your eyes and look out upon your dreams, 
and tell you they are dreams ; and give you, for a 
moment, vision, taste, hearing, smell and touch of 
verity. 

" Yes, I awake — Man, ultimate verity, whose life 
is not the dreamy life men live the while I sleep : whose 
life wakes in the passionate love of comrades, men 
and women, dying not when they die. 

" I take your body, prepared of love ; and now. 



The Coming of Man 3 5 

at the turning of a page, at the glancing of a lover— 
now, for a moment only, I fill it with Myself. 

" I wanderer, stranger, searching the worlds for ever 
for My mate, now, for a moment only, dismissmg fear 
from you, and heed of aught (they will return again 
when you forget Me, though for a time, as unrest and 
perplexity I haunt you, to return)— wakenmg you 
from the memories, cares and hopes that are your 
(li-eam— I, through your eyes behold Her. 

"^Her, for a moment of eternal rapture, through you, 
I love." 

THE voice of the creatures that waken and cry : 
" Who is there that will lead us into the way ? 
—will bring us into the way that leads home ? " 

The voice of one that crieth bidding them into the 
way, the way of fellowship that is for their feet, the 
way of fellowship that leads home :— 

" /If AN is my name, and my spirit is free ; 
^^ Mine are the laws, and behold, I am free of 
them. 
Garments are they that I doff or I don. 
Mine for my service or else I have done with them. 

''Are they my body ? Are they my breath ? 

Are they my purpose that now they should hinder me ? 

I am the maker and master of laws, 

Man is my name, and my spirit is Liberty. 

" Gods I beheld in my passionate dreams, 
Gods I created, aspiring to deity/ 



36 The Great Companions 

Let you go by or let you abide, 

Man is my name, and the ages go over me. 

" Past that is gone. Future to be, 

Present of mine that transcends and embraces them, 

Here in my flesh is the wonder divine. 

Here in this body the spring of eternity. 

" I am come up out of fear and desire, 
Quick in my nostrils the breath of the Fellowship, 
Out from mine eyes flash the forms that endure. 
Throbs through my pulses the music that marshals 
them. 



" For I was meek, for I was 
For I was penitent, hiimble and patient, 
Therefore my heart is the heart of the Lord, 
And I accomplish the joy of creation.'' 



V. The City 

AS though they had never been young — dull-eyed, 
disappointed, dreary — men and women go by 
along the path before me. 

But blithe and all adventure, their sons and their 
daughters, eager-eyed, lovely-faced, woo one another, 
as though they could never grow old. 

THE Sunday crowds, this summer evening, fill 
the streets with strange adventures for the 
heart of a youth : after the restricted hours, a hundred 
new companion faces, with beckoning glee and merry 
eyes, and secrets in them to discover. 

Laughing he passes, he guesses, he questions them : 
laughing as they pass him by, they answer. 

Till of a sudden, one, moving in a mystery ! her 
eyes are bright with meaning, her lurking life through 
all her dress bewilders him — she did not touch him, 
but he felt her close : she did not speak, but she was 
saying something — ah, now she is gone by ! 

Going, she glances backward, and at the sign of her 
he leaves himself to follow, follow into new seas 
uncharted yet. 

But she — she has not guessed her own Hfe's secret : 
she does not know what is it that shines out through 
all her flesh upon him. 

37 



38 The Great Companions 

The Sunday streets are grown adventurous to the 
venturing heart of youth. 

AS I went along the streets, I was bewildered by 
the myriad faces. 

There were many that passed by without a sign ; 
but first one stranger, then another, would seem to 
beckon or to challenge me, and I must needs turn 
back to answer, till I was bewildered. 

I was distraught because of the passers-by : why 
should they so catch at me ? 

The fierce and caressing glances were perhaps as 
nothings ; but all that whispering of the innumerable 
crowd bewildered me and shook my heart. 

As I went through the thick of the faces I became 
afraid of life itself, so multitudinous, vast and hostile, 
so hard to be resisted. 

That stohd stony London was all ahve ; on every 
side I felt it touch and thrill me. 

In the country there is room to be alone, and quiet 
to consider in ; but in the city I was always beset by the 
eyes and breath of them that toy with caged wild passions. 

I grew afraid of the whirling, eddying currents, 
sweeping along the narrow streets ; for through them 
gleamed a wrath, thwarted, confined, shut in from 
wide horizons, from the trees and the blowing of the 
free night-winds. 

As I walked I was aware of sinister dark shapes 
lurking in byways, and horrible things haunting the 
shadows ; in my own heart also, in its byways and 
among its shadows, I could feel the same forms lurking, 
haunting, so that I was bewildered and afraid. . . , 



The City 39 

But now I am no longer to be dismayed because of 
that river of faces, because of the signals and sugges- 
tions of the passers-by. 

Though they challenge and awaken in me a multitude 
that is not I, I walk among them undismayed. 

Vainly now they call me, idly frown and beckon ; 
I am indifferent though they catch at me with wanton 
fingers, for myself I am awake ; it is myself that makes 
reply. 

Now it is I that go forth with signal and with chal- 
lenge, saying my word to all, confronting each to-day 
with a glance from which now he in his turn, she in 
hers, cannot escape. 

WHEN I go up out of my sunny fields to the grey 
City, wearily to inhale its heavy air, I cry to 
myself, " 'Twas the devil that made London ! Here 
are the gates of Hell, devourers of men ! " For very 
lonely seem her iron streets to me, separating me from 
my heart's desire. 

In my cottage love abides ; thither from day to 
day, to quicken my slow pulses, from comrades out of 
every land and age, some message finds me. 

Also, the sun is my companion on the hills, and the 
winds of heaven : the woods speak with me, and the 
little creatures in the fields, and I am free of the illimit- 
able sky. 

Yet sometimes, even to one whom the Earth has 
blessed, and for whom the Great Fellowship stands 
open, to him, also, comes the desire of London, grey- 
robed, belov'd of men, sitting at her misty window 
with words to speed and welcome. 



40 The Great Companions 

Then I understand the loneliness of the fields ; I 
long for the thick press of faces, the electric contact 
of the crowd, the pregnant meeting of some stranger 
in the streets, and all the stirring intercourse of men. 

I grow deaf to the dear God of the fields : mine eyes 
are dull : my soul shrivels away : though the sun 
and wind are calHng me, passionately I cry " Give me 
the life of men ! " 

Eagerly, then, I come to you, grey-robed Lady ; 
even health and assurance of heart are become less to 
me than your gift. 

And for that I must be where men and women gather, 
in the streets, the shops, the clubs and taverns, the 
theatres and parks and churches ; I must go with the 
torrent of my kind, must be mixed with men, laughing, 
despairing, lost in that resistless river. 

In such hours, O grey City, I remember, wondering, 
who made you long ago, impassioning you with fateful 
love. 

It was Man who begat you, his daughter, to be be- 
loved for your high heart, for your imperious will, your 
intense eyes, and quick drawn breath. 

But now are you fallen sick, and there comes a sick- 
ness into my heart with the love of you, and to dwell 
with you is become an evil thing. 

Wherefore, our Lady, we that love you, pray you 
come away now and walk the fields ; you have kept 
watch too long at your river window ; your bridal 
gown is faded and grey ; is it not time you went on 
holiday ? 

Behold England, your garden ! how pleasantly it 
lies, and for the sake of you how it lies lonely ! 



The City 41 

Does not your heart hunger again for its remembered 
brooks, its dewy meadows, its golden wide champaign, 
its purple moors and mountains where once you were 
a child ? Does not your body weary of its robe, and 
long for flowers ? 

Let your feet carry you out to the sweet places of 
the grass where Mother Earth awaits you. 



IT is good to the soul to walk on Hampstead Heath ! 
I climb the ridge to the wide prospect, the 
woody basin and far hills : then, through the living 
wonder of a green world, by sandy trodden paths 
descending, I put the high ridge between London and 
my heart. 

Here the bracken and the birches make me a welcome 
as for some wanderer returned : and the breath of 
the soil restores my troubled soul : underfoot, I feel 
the dear earth soft with leaves, and the little dead 
sheathings of leaves : my heart rejoices in the fine fili- 
gree work of the tormentil, the bright drops on the 
grasses, the bramble flowers, the defiant heather, the 
sorrel and the sage, the mystical hints in the pale of 
the birch boughs against the dark shades. 

The glass -shards and the scattered papers seem a 
very little thing, the boughs broken and the shouting 
boys but little — for I breathe the eternal, the ineffable 
subtlety of the blossoming hmes. 

London, over yonder, is it your banks and ware- 
houses, your slums and factories that you truly prize ? 
Or is it perhaps this unforgettable grass, this smell of 
the earth, these songs among the leaves ? 



42 The Great Companions 

O after all, the skylark nests within your heart ; 
and though you may be speaking falsehoods, yet 
do you love the truth : though to-day, even here in 
these free groves, trampling, slaying and destroying, 
you blaspheme the eternal, yet are you come of the 
Earth, and even here, out of the Earth shall you re- 
member and learn worship, O daughter of the Earth. 

She has patience, and her children fail her not at 
last. 

The grasshoppers will return to their ancient play- 
grounds, with joy and love, laughter of children and 
desire of youth, daring of manhood and divine assurance 
of old age. 

Then why should I lament you, fir-trees on the 
knoll, though to-day the smoke is slaying you ? To 
your places, when the smoke is passed you shall return, 
lifting your wonderful heads against the windy sky! 
Already I can almost hear the squirrels and the rabbits 
coming back, with fine sallies of tree-laughter and 
moonlight mirth bringing the good days in, the evil 
days forgot. 

A promise fills my heart when I walk on Hampstead 
Heath, with this divine tree-quiet, this immortal wind- 
murmur, this abiding Earth-peace, beyond and under 
all. 

I SEEM to see the gentlemen of England white upon 
the field of their national game : but alas, it is 
not now, in my sight, a wicket against which they 
play : I see a Cross — or is it three set up together — 
a Son of Man still hanging in the midst. 
The others do not see : it stands far enough from 



The City 43 



the bowler to make him a fair mark ; the batsman's 
back is turned ; the eyes of the wicket-keeper are 
upon the game ; he is well-gloved, and though he 
stump the batsman he will never notice there is blood 
upon the bails, or I think he must cry out unmannerly 
and interrupt the game. 

That red thing they are bowling with and buffeting, 
I can see now well enough why it is such a sullen red : 
but the players do not see : as of old, they have chosen 
a mark, how should they perceive that the times are 
altered, or recognize for Golgotha the place in which 
they stand ? 

Yesterday, indeed, good humour and poUteness 
and the playing of the game seemed excellent things : 
but to-day, the great words are being spoken, to be a 
man, a woman, is what they demand. 

The day is come, but they go on playing : for yonder 
mark will serve : they cannot feel in their white hands 
while they bandy it, the throb of that fierce human 
heart, eager to be buffeted and broken if needs be, 
for the making of liberty and justice — is it not indeed 
the heart of a god ? — but they use it merely to make 
runs ! 

Let them play on ! but the day is come, and with 
it work to be doing that our hands ache for : to-day 
at last, we shall spend our blood ! 

For the red flag is flying, the pass-words are chosen, 
the revolution has commenced : but, since it is no 
game of battles, the gentlemen-warriors do not notice 
it : no, no ! this is no game of battles ! 

It is a new creation, the living labour of true men 
and women, comrades ; who are disentangled from 



44 The Great Companions 

the fabric of good society, and are not beholden to its 
lords : comrades, for whom the others are become as 
pitiful shadows of the Past, playing their fooHsh shadowy 
game amid the morning breezes and the awakened 
grass. 



OUT from our labour, from the narrow streets, 
laughing and singing, we troop into the free 
fields, we, the people. 

It is May month : here in the dusk, breathes for us 
the world's forgotten wonder, that our hearts, kindling 
together as they meet, again discover. 

Other meetings are in the town, their windows closed 
against the noisy street, brimful of words : praising 
some sage and changeless Past, telling over again some 
cherished legend of ventures well-approved and hopes 
secure now, with loud congratulations. 

But here, in the sweet Spring air, under the haw- 
thorns there is another Voice abroad : " Forward ! " 
the wonder bids, to ever-new adventures, perilous 
hopes : strange eyes are kindling here, strange hands 
grasping each other for the future. 

Nor strangers only, nor only here under the fragrant 
boughs : but ever3rwhere to-night. Faith moves among 
the people ; hands, reaching out, find a new comrade- 
ship ; old memories bud with promise ; into our circle 
out of all the ages come the Great Companions. 



VII. One of London's Lovers 

To Ben Kirkman Gray. 

E was knotty timber, intricate of fibre, and stern 



H 



made ; good for the fire once he was kindled. 

I can see him still as on some winter's night, against 
the friendly blaze ; now this way and now that, be- 
wilderingly he thrusts the searching point of his swift 
thought, with mischievous delight. 

I see him in the fields, the light about him, surrounded 
by the flowers in the deep grass, worshipping as a 
lover before the daily beauty of the Earth. 

Again, alone in the wet gale, grapphng his task, 
hatless, determined, chin stubbornly set, eyes big and 
deep under his brow ; short, compact, I see him stride, 
with clenching fists, enduring in the fight. 

SUCH a man, I suppose, walked once the Athenian 
ways, fierce of brain, vehement, relentless, kind : 
ever-young questioner of all ; lover of men ; cherishing 
in his breast a late-maturing passion, an age-enkindling 
flame. 

Old Questioner ! how many questions are we not 
fain to ask you ! Could we but catch, O Socrates, 
even to-day, the secret of that passion that glows so 
red among your words ! 

And he, my friend, knotty and slow of growth, con- 

45 



46 The Great Companions 

tinuing yet to grow, sprang from the root of you, im- 
passioned still as by some primal prophecy out of the 
constant Earth. 



SEE him, and guess what word it is that hangs upon 
his lips, shoots from his eyes and throbs within 
his brow ! 

What is it that he sees behind those pages : whose 
is the face that from the ranked statistics, looks out 
and answers with unspeakable gaze ? 

Walking the hills beside him, guess what is 't the 
trees are telling him, and what the wind declares, 
what truth it is the Earth is certifying to him, lover of 
Her and truth. 

IF you were to go down into the Dorset village where 
he was born, now, after five and forty years, per- 
haps the little manse might say over again for you the 
secret spoken in it then, but though you heard it, would 
you understand what even he was long in understanding? 

For he was knotty timber of the Earth and slow of 
growth. 

It was not indeed for nothing he was bred a country 
lad, learning the gloom and the clear of the sky, adven- 
turing in green fields where run bright brooks among 
the king-cups ; crouching under the twisted thorn 
with all the gale about him, becoming at night familiar 
with the stars. 

At home with the earth-creatures, a child of the 
Earth, never was he to wander out of Her wisdom, 
though he should walk the streets, noisy and deep and 
hard. 



One of London's Lovers 47 

HE received Her secret and was nourished of the 
Earth, but could not understand. 

No, when he came to London, to take up his lonely 
life, his uncongenial task, plodding thither and back 
and forcing his brain to plod while there awakened in 
him the fierce thirst for knowledge — he might not 
understand the word that hid within his breast. 

Bitterly, but not vainly then he fought for knowledge, 
and for self-knowledge, pacing the noisy streets, through 
those long years before he understood, or any understood 
him. 

Lonely, hungry and proud, the heart of the young 
man cried, " Very well, you world ! you shall never 
understand me ! " 

He would have hidden himself afar, like a sick wild 
creature, perishing solitary, unseen, in his dark rage. 

BUT when he went into the fields, the eternal love- 
liness of Nature wooed him ; and Love, wounded 
by his fierce pride, bade, all night long the stars reprove 
him, till, with new eyes, he should discern the sympathy 
of those that shared perplexed, the struggle of his being, 
inseparable from his life. 

So, coming up to manhood, he began to love now one 
and now another, and presently, the people. 

THEN not for nothing he recalled his childish fear, 
nightmare of dreadful flight from an inexorable 
hunter — the bland doors of the workhouse waiting, 
waiting. 

But now for other than himself he dreaded them, 
that loomed up ever blander, ever vaster, before their 



48 The Great Companions 

hopeless quarry, lording it over the foolish city, doors 
of the huge hold of that werewolf, infidelity. 

Confronting them, his fear gave place to wrath against 
the barren industry, the stupid satisfactions, ineffectual 
discontents of men. 

A fire was kindling in him : as on a hearth, with 
sacred care, he nursed its smoke-encumbered flame 

WRATH deepened into passion. 
Year after year, brooding within his heart 
and pent behind his hps, the purpose gathered, waiting 
its time for speech. 

He sought in the churches whether there were some 
place, whence, ringing through the rafters of the past, 
its challenge might arouse the warrior, Faith. 

No place for it he found, but seeking there, if he 
found pious foes, he won brave comrades — labourers, 
artisans, young men and women questioning life, who, 
if they scarcely savoured the too subtle substance of 
his thought, caught from his face the promise of a task 
full worthy manhood. 

Also, a wanderer emerging from his loneliness, he 
found a mate to match his eager heart, assure him 
through impatience, quicken the fire and bring that 
great word forth. 

REBEL against the callow loves and easy moods 
of men, his sudden-blazing manhood flashed 
its truth out at a look, a word, stabbing the false thing 
through with the white scorn of its relentless Hght : 
his rough prophetic wrath fed by the passionate tender- 
ness that filled his soul. 



One of London's Lovers 4 9 

For now, whole-hearted, his manhood was become 
the lover of a City, and she in bonds, in the toils of the 
great hunter. 

London, that has forgotten her hope, sad, beautiful 
daughter of Earth — to Her he had given his heart. 

He knew what joy was lost among the trodden human 
grasses of her fields, and what ineffable fruit should 
hang on her bare ominous tree : for the wise Earth 
had told him. 



LONDON, a hving soul ! 
It was not for her past nor for her shows he 
loved her — save as they shone in the eyes of her gutter- 
brood a-dance about the organ-man ; or of her sweated 
seamstress, wrapped in some poor linen and the glory 
ai her first motherhood ; or of some hungry dreamer 
of great dreams, — in such he saw her face, her tragic 
face, all dim with evil things, London, the passion of 
his life. 

Ever more royally, for love of her, he entertained 
that god-Hke guest, mocker of meanness and rebuker 
of kings, wrath that is also laughter. 

Ever henceforward was he at labour for her ; by 
day and night devising how he might rouse up Faith, 
and waken her, sad Titaness, with words of Liberty 
sprung out of her own fair desolate long-unvisited 
fields, and they might welcome her, returning. 

SHE shall return ! yes, though the bonds thicken 
about her, and his voice cry out no more. 
Was it for nothing he was born a country lad to 

D 



50 The Great Companions 

know the gloom and the clear of the sky ? For nothing 
he won knowledge, for nothing he learned love ? 

Was it in vain he saw her face, and knew in that 
sad face the beauty men may die for and not die — the 
purpose of the ages ? 

But his was timber for the undying fire. 

His passion made him one with the sure will of Life : 
grown potent by his love, he died amid creative hopes, 
imperishable and triumphant. 

Sadly I came out of his vacant house, when lo, a 
red flag flying : a wrathful, challenging flag of flame 
that flaunted in the breeze and cried, blithe but defiant, 
as it were he, my friend. 

FRIEND, friend ! You would not let us be content 
with any aims of ours : you kept before us, your 
keen eyes saw it well, an aim that was better than 
they. 

You would not be satisfied : and because of you, we 
were ashamed to find our satisfaction in achievements 
still unreal, achievements that accomphsh nothing of 
the Task that Man was made for — Liberty — the carrying 
captivity captive, and letting the oppressed go free. 

That Task always before you, near and vociferous 
as the London street, but ultimate and endless as 
creation — proving it yours to do, you loved it, friend, 
and now shall death prevent you ? 

No, for I feel you call us comradely that we relinquish 
other aims, tackHng the task subhme reserved for manly 
comrades, winning our life and death together with 
you. 



VII. Pioneers 
A Mechanic. 

A MECHANIC, wearing a muffler and dirty white 
jersey, with round boy's face full of the pleasure 
of life, he sat opposite me in the railway carriage eager 
to talk. 

He told with relish all the details of his stories, the 
names of his favourite pubs, where he called on his 
long Sunday tramps — " Walking is a hobby of mine," 
says he : — and just how it was he paid out the officer 
who had bulHed him in the ranks, his blue eyes shone 
with glee as he told me. 

He lives two hours from work, but no sooner is he 
home at night and washed and cleaned up after supper, 
than off he sets again to meet some friend. 

He spoke well, his thoughts finding the right words 
and enjoying them ; and when we shook hands at my 
station, I knew him for a good friend at need, and I 
can still see his boy's face, and feel the great pleasure 
his life was giving him, yes, even the telling it to a 
stranger. 

Honest Robin. 

HE is so frank a fellow he thinks shame of hiding 
up his heart. Glad in his youth, he vests in 
green. 

61 



52 The Great Companions 

Thoughtful and red as a berry is his mouth, his grey 
Scots eyes quiet and comradely. 

Brown-legged, Hght-shod, carrying his spade, heroic 
through the sunshine, he swings along our open street 
indifferent to the jeering lads. 

When Robin loves, open and downrightly he proffers 
all his manhood and proclaims it : with divine gesture, 
he defies the lords and commonalty : " Faith," says 
he, " is bond for honest comrades ; other, means 
treachery and misdoubting : what for is Liberty if not 
for Love ? " 



A Woman. 

GENEROUS is she and wise : unmarried she has 
made her home in life with the well- married 
women, mothers of many children. 

Out of her broad, deep breast comes the sea-wind 
of great laughter : her eyes look keenly, kindly, they 
search and turn not aside. 

Women and men are equally her comrades, the 
younger call her Mother, for she loves all that lives. 

Music she makes, she writes, of every art she is a 
craftsman, but chiefly of the highest that rounds all, 
fellowship ; which, as the sun when he is risen does 
outshine the moon his fair vice-regent, so outshines 
pale white religion. 

A Preacher. 

AFTER the singing was done, he stood up silent, 
looking upon the people. Rank upon rank, as 
type upon a page he conned them, All the faces 



Pioneers 5 3 

were as words, but as he ran his eyes over the page, it 
was not them he heeded, but again, again as so often 
before, a single mystic question that leapt to greet him 
from among them all. 

Then to his lips, that let them pass as though with 
careful choice, the words responding came ; strange 
simple words, gathered in many fields, following one 
another in a solemn dance, sure-footed rhythmical 
and sacred all ; yet all, as it were unheeded of his brain, 
from his lips issuing to their purpose, obedient to their 
choice. 

Under his deep-enkindled eyes the people sat ; they 
heard but did not understand him, and he, he heeded 
not whether they understood or heard his voice. 

Intent upon his answer, straight he stood, slender 
in his black coat buttoned across his breast, stretching 
his long arms out as if to them, yet as if not to them, 
but to some One among their many that he knew, with 
Whom alone he spoke. 

He spoke as to a friend who understands, but simply ; 
he spoke as looking into his child-friend's face sure of 
response there ; he stretched his arms to meet the 
child's embrace. 

The people made no answer ; they shuffled in their 
chairs ; they smiled at his tight-buttoned coat, at the 
freckles upon his nose, at his stiffly stretched out arms, 
and his quaint careful words that sang as they came 
slowly from his Hps ; the people smiled, they did not 
understand, not one of them stretched out his arms in 
answer. 

Looking upon them all what did he see ? 

From behind their faces looking out, from behind 



54 The Great Companions 

those quizzically smiling lips and eyes, the divine dear 
infant face, the still-unconscious Soul watching him 
with its truth-compelhng gaze. 

So, as a mother to her little babe, yea, as Madonna 
to the Blessed One, he spoke his sweet strange crooning 
mystic words. 



The Waif. 

THOUGH I be but a helpless little soul on whom 
the world frowns, pursing up its lips and whis- 
pering serpent words, yet hath God given me joy, even 
with this my body. 

And he hath given me childish words of praise to 
Him, because He filled you so with love you opened 
wide your hearts to me, fatherless, motherless, bodiless 
waif of the night, and made me sharer in His joy and 
yours. 

A Child. 

HE is not four years old, but out of his clear eyes — 
as from far sunset heights where the blue rises 
to meet the stars — out of his clear child's eyes the 
Timeless One looks love upon his world. 

Very wise are his eyes, candid and pure, because for 
his begetting Love took up in His creative hands two 
living souls, tearing them from the places where they 
stood, and in the world's sight wedding them together. 

Him, august, the world saw not, but the woman 
and the man it saw. 

It saw their empty places, their broken pledges, the 



Pioneers 5 5 

marred forsaken hearths that they had left : it saw 
and cursed them. 

But Love amid their wonder said, " World, you 
shall misunderstand no longer ! Behold, I wrought this 
handiwork for you." 

Then from the bodies of those two came forth a Child 
that seemed none other now than Love Himself ; to 
whom the old world — ashamed of its poor cursing — holds 
longingly out its foolish eager hands. 

And the child smiling comes. 

The Alchemist. 

BEHOLD this man ; beset in boyhood by ineffectual 
passions, rathe, unripe and bitter-sweet, loves 
whose appeal was only to be met by mocking laughter, 
rude rebuffs : haunted in manhood by a dull red heat 
that gave no light but instead the smoking darkness 
of a passionate uncertainty : a stirring of dread loves, 
wild hopes too near to madness, too hardly captured 
from the impossible regions of sin or death or dream, 
wantonly to be pursued any more, waywardly now to 
be cherished, or continued as by the fond extravagance 
of young folly out of hfe's sacred store. 

Now, gathering together at last all the smoking 
brands and blind coals of his being, and withdrawing 
them into the innermost chambers, covering them 
there close as in a furnace, containing there, within, the 
fierceness of their heat and quickening it with his 
breath ; he — the only alchemist, the creator of some 
final and most precious substance — out of the dross of 
sin and acid of pain, out of the ashes and cinders of 



56 The Great Companions 

dead abandoned pleasures, out of the complex con- 
glomerate of his experience concentrated here by the 
fire in this closed still chamber, educes at the last 
enduring joy. 

The Begetter. 

THE will and urge of Love divine enough — the 
passion of manhood sure and ripe enough — he 
knows who thrusts his prayer so deep into the secret 
place as there to awaken the dreaming potency, the 
uncreated life, and bid it forth, out of its blind recesses 
in the unconscious woman-womb of chaos, into the 
world of men. 

Dark, dread that passage and adventure : he commits 
himself wholly to it, perishing save for its issue. 

Taking the protest of institutions, breasting the laws 
of accompHshed order, single he stands, naked, alone, 
unblushing, conscious that from his loins leaps the new 
impulse — springs the new Humanity. 

The secrets of the future, that wait darkling in the 
abysmal treasury of the Earth until some soul dares 
claim them, only for him come forth. 

To Edward Carpenter. 

TO you, comrade, my heart goes with its greeting, 
because while others were perplexing me, bidding 
me here or there with passionate importunity, you with 
those wise deep quiet eyes I feel upon me ever as from 
the eternal places watching me — say to me only " Life, 
life, Ufe, Hfe, life ! " 

Running hither and thither, searching and eager, I 



Pioneers 5 7 

heard your voice and remembered : pausing and finding 
its place, my heart brings you its greeting. 

A Face. 

" ^TT^HERE is that in me I do not understand, — is 
X there not that in you, striving to utter itself ? 

It has made a perplexity of my life from its beginning ; 
it has taken me into dark paths, seeking now this way 
and now that for its expression, overburdening body 
and mind with its desire. 

Till to-day it is a great passion, a god, that holding 
me like a reed between his fingers breathes into me sweet 
notes, that I vibrate from head to foot and feel my body 
changing at each breath. 

For this one, now for that, stranger or comrade, 
present or to come, he plays, taking me up and setting 
me aside at his good pleasure. 

But O, his breath is Hke a flame ! 

Nameless One ! this way and that from Thine in- 
expressible burden have I besought deliverance, but 
in vain. 

Perhaps after all, I am destined silently to endure, 
till I myself, through all my flesh, through every thought 
and deed, through all I am, utter at last and be that 
measureless vast life which, like a flame, within my 
body at Thy presence kindles, O immortal Thou ! " 



VIII. Love's Body 

I SEE one in whom Love dwells. 
His body is as the Hght that shines : his body is 
swift and clear. 

Perfectly wrought is it of bone and ligament, of fibres 
subtle as silk and quintessential blood and wise firm 
flesh, all like a tempered bell unto his purpose sounding. 

Disease, lust, tyranny, have no dwelling in him, nor 
discontent ; but as life bids, he acts ; and life in him is 
godhood, knowing its will and that its fruit is good, and 
well content awaiting it. 

And I saw the Great Fellowship — the fellowship of 
the Divine People — how it impassions those strong shining 
ones, coals of pure fierceness burning together, one white 
undying flame. 

Then I remembered how Walt Whitman, when his 
people was responding to war's wild challenge, his soul 
responding also, made oath and answer for himself in 
solemn words, to build his body up into an altar that 
should sustain that changeless fire. 

And now — his outer body broken, shattered, dead, — 
the inner, one and constant — I see him stand, holding 
his beacon high above the clouds of Time, not for 
America alone, but as a sign to every nation : — a man 
responsive to Love's lightest breath, a man for Love's 
most fierce demand, patient, enduring. 

58 



Love's Body 59 

HE heralds the new days when comradeship shall be 
established among men, and Man the Divine 
Being, shall awake in them and rule. 

When, beholding Love no longer as though bound and 
blinded amid the jealousies and lusts of lovers, but as 
He truly is, we shall misunderstand our passion no more, 
but to us it will be sacred, reverent, immortal, not to be 
refused. 

Nor shall we miss any longer the wondrous uses of 
the bodies of His dwelling, the symbols of His mystery, 
but enter through them into His dehght. 

AND even now that day begins to break : wherefore, 
do you, dear body, my companion, remain no 
more without the Fellowship, keeping my soul divided ; 
but when my heart runs forward, praising and acclaiming 
as its own that free life of Love, do you consent thereto 
making one voice with mine. 

Hold me not back any more out of that life which I 
would share : retain me no more within the clinging web 
of your sensations. 

For you yourself declare it is not your own pleasure 
that will satisfy you, nor even your renewal again and 
yet again : but that in the mystery of our companionship, 
and its obscure necessities. Humanity should find an 
answer to the ancient riddle of the Earth, and there- 
with our enfranchisement. 

ON my side also, I will be faithful, for wherever I 
have arrived it is in you, my body ; it is you that 
have brought me hither to all I know, and I have hardly 
yet begun to understand your worth. 



6o The Great Companions 

You, body, were from the beginning, and are until the 
end, responsive to every need : — reHgion, politics and 
whatever men discuss, arose in you to be settled there : 
the more profound and sacred, the more deeply involved. 

The reaUties of God and Man and the fragrant passion 
of Love, are flowers that could not bloom for us unless 
they were securely rooted in your flesh : art, worship 
and philanthropy are vain notions, mere pastimes for 
the polite, unless they arise out of the impulse of that 
passion which you alone can harbour and communicate. 

You are the vehicle of the soul, and not until the body 
of a man is become as sacred and as beautiful to us as 
the body of a woman, his loins as significant of religion 
as her womb and breasts, and the junction of their bodies 
the very sacrament of the mysteries, not until then can 
life become again for us potent and clean and sweet. 

For passion is the gift of God, and the seed of the 
divine Hfe is sown by it in you : you are the place of Love's 
indwelling, the vessel of Love's communion, the meeting- 
house for worshippers, the soul's companion from whom 
she must not part until you have unlocked the gates of 
hberty, and breathed the spirit of aeonian life. 

WHEREFORE I made this song for my body : 
" Body, I cannot think that yon were horn 
Merely to he my raiment, till, outworn, 
I fling you down to perish i7i the mire ; 
Rather you seem the flesh of some desire 
Elder than I, and mystical to me : 
You were not wrought so wondrous well to he 
The creature of my fancy ; you are part 
Of that Eternal Being at whose heart 



Love's Body 6i 

The infinite pure 'purpose of the Earth 
Waits, until Man himself shall come to birth." 

THEN answering me, my body said : " Brother, I 
am not separate, as may appear, a being com- 
plete in myself, but one of many and a member of all. 

"Wherefore, cause me not to live apart and soHtary, 
but give me to the dear contact of Earth and of my 
fellows, and to the Hving air and sun, that so I may 
come to utter all I know. 

" Apart I cannot tell it, but I am capable of things you 
do not dream of. 

" When you shall give me to my proper task and labour, 
toiling, rejoicing, suffering in the hfe of all my kind, I 
will communicate my secret to you. 

" For then I shall be as a leaf of the Great Tree to whom 
the blowing winds give speech, and in my words the 
wisdom of the commerce between earth and sky. 

" As yet I am but dumb : for you are still with- 
holding me, for purposes that are but as ignorance 
and folly, from the labours that endure." 



IN no book is it written, but deep within the body if 
one might read, in each heart's longing of un- 
uttered prayer is hid hfe's secret. 

Creator, Who, in the purpose of my life dwellest as 
in a temple — Almighty God, Who boldest each life's 
destiny hidden and safe from it, safe, safe within it — very 
self of itself, spiritual core of flesh — O, sacred, universal 
and ineffable Me, source of each life and most for me of 



62 The Great Companions 

mine, purpose and guide of all — here, now, seeking my 
self, my work, my destiny, hungering for the soul's 
bread of fellowship, O God, I come to Thee ! 

Within, I feel Thy purpose moulding me still, as in all 
the immeasurable past, patiently, sternly, surely, to 
mine unconscious thought. Fearless, I yield my body 
and mind to Thee for Thy creating : I take Thy will : I 
have no other being. 



I AM grateful, O wise Love, for my path before me, 
for the task that opens ever to my hand, for the 
kindhng of the eternal flame : but I pray Thee give me 
yet another gift : that I go not sohtary on my way, 
labouring alone ! 

Give me, O my God, my share in Thee ! 

Let me sometimes feel about me the enkindling power 
of Thy creating ! Let me sometimes lose my self and 
my task in Thine : let me find my home in all that is 
not me ! 



AGAIN, these are the words of a mortal, longing for 
the immortal Lover : 
" Behold now, and look upon me. Thou that loves t 
me : for O I am weary of my virginity : what is this my 
maidenhood but a barren field. 

" It bringeth forth, it bringeth forth, but it is not 
fruit : O I am weary of my virginity. 

" I have no beauty that Thou shouldst desire me, O 



Love's Body 63 

Lord of Life, but I long after Thee : surely when I was 
being conceived I beheld Thy face, wherefore I am un- 
satisfied because of Thee : O whither have I strayed 
that I behold thee now no more ? 

" I am lost : I walk among dreams : my soul sleepeth 
till thou awake her : — Lord, O my Lord, how long ? " 

" TJELOVED, I praise Thee for the love with which 

J3 Thou dost encompass me ! O wise lover, thou 
art very patient with the slow maturing of my love. 

"Thou knowest the ways of life and why I am not ready 
yet for Thy avowal : I know not, only I know I am not 
ready — eager to-day for Thee, to-morrow barren of 
desire, indifferent to Thee — again utterly perplexed by 
mine inconstant girlish heart ! 

" Thou knowest, O patient and wise Lover, thou 
knowest, and my poor heart blesses thee. 

" I too, impatient though I be, am I not patient ? " 

" /^ LOVE, my God, that I might give body to Thee, 

V^ substance tangible to the hearts of men ! 

" Long enough have I played at personation, now that 
I might be He whom I worship, yea for I shall be He ! 

"Not merely to some belov'd one offering, but enter- 
taining the Divine Life within, that burns and blazes forth 
on all, a lover in whom Love abides. 

" Come Love ! Thou art not my God, abiding not in 
me ! 

" This conscious being of mine is all too good for him 
that dwells therein, is capable and worthy even of Thee. 

" Abandoning my claim on it and all, I am come 
at last to Thee, 



64 The Great Companions 

"I am come at last to the door I cannot pass, so narrow 
it is and low ; I behold, on the farther side, my proper 
life, and pass I will. 

" If I am very patient, humble and eager, then shall I 
pass through, even as a child that passes the door of 
birth, even as one that passes through death's door." 

" TJ ELOVED, who art nearer me than aught, mysteri- 

J3 ous invisible Being, whom with deep breaths 
and worship I perceive, as an infant feels the mother- 
presence near, — Beloved, do I wrong Thee saying 
' God ' ? 

" Behold, I long, ah foohshly I long, to know thy name, 
to see thy face, to hear thy voice : yet when I know Thee 
near, I have no care even for these, only my thought, 
my brain, cries out if it might serve Thee. 

" See, yonder is a man whose words are all afire with 
love ; like burning coals out of the engine-draught 
they fall, enkindling the dry ground, blown recklessly 
up aloft, outbreathed from a fierce furnace of inspired 
dehght that heeds them not, fierily whirling on its 
way. 

"Yea, and such urging fire even in me. Thou art, that 
with deep breaths and wondering gusts of prayer I feed 
and fan. 

" And these poor words I scatter are the rattHng hail 
thou sowest as I go, urged ever on by Thee. 

" O Love, I call Thee by this name or that, and it 
grows false to Thee, but Thou remainest. 

" By human or celestial names I call Thee — they cannot 
hold Thee always — but always Thou, in my heart and 
the great heart of the world, kindlest and burnest." 



Love's Body 65 

IT is easy to undress the body, and good to stand out 
naked in the immortal freshness of the wind ; but 
to undress the soul, to put off bodily consciousness, 
cares and the raiments of thought, to stand out naked 
in the winds of the Spirit, — though it is better, it is not 
easy. 

To know the beloved is sweet, and to become one to- 
gether in the body is a mystery : so also is it mystically 
sweeter to know the invading presence of the soul's Lover, 
and to become one body in Him. 

It is not easy to unwrap the soul, embuttoned and 
enwrapped in things and thought, but it is sweet to he 
down and rest in the Beloved's arms. 

HE came to me in the fields, the Divine Lover. 
I had no name upon my lips to greet Him 
when He came, but all my being welcomed Him with 
lover's joy. 

And now I had rather He came to them I love as unto 
me He came — yea, I had rather that than I should come 
to them. 

I had rather he should satisfy their longing for a lover : 
nay, unless it were He, not I, that came in me, how could 
I ever satisfy their longing ? 

I SEE the wanderer. Love, showing himself to them 
that believe on him, abiding with them, though he 
passes, to gather together by twos and by threes and by 
handfuls the myriad folk, out of their human passion 
to shape him a body for fulfilling the heavens and earth. 
Who is faithful to Him and fears nothing, but gives up 
himself full of failings, weak, foolish, treacherous, cun- 



66 The Great Companions 

ning, into the hands creative, of him in His unrelenting 
patience, Love fashions a part of that Body Immortal, 
that Beauty Eternal, that Changeless Glory. 

ONCE, before Love transformed them, these sought 
only wealth and power, that men might applaud 
and that women might give them their love ; but now 
they are content, having become a part of His body. 

For Deity became the word of their longing : to 
know themselves in the Absolute, that alone was to find 
their place : it was to have no longer any need for praise 
or for success, it was to forget anxiety and fierce desire. 

Weak they might be, fooHsh they might be, they might 
fail to effect their purposes, but behold they loved ! 
therefore they were in the fellowship wherein is God : 
their Hfe is not weak, nor fooHsh, nor vain in That : in 
That it is immortal, the Principle of the Ages. 

FOR ever, through all the years. Love the trans- 
cendent is finding a Body for himself in the pas- 
sionate desire of the creatures : his Hfe, hidden within their 
flesh, awakes at some magical glance or touch or breath. 
Flower-Hke becomes the body that understands, the 
flesh wherein He awakens. 

It shines within : its dulness dies away. 
The heavy fragrance passes from desire : it opens and 
emits a mystic virtue. 

OUT of this human flesh, so subtly wrought and 
curiously fashioned with all the wisdom of the 
ages, pure white and wonderful I see thy blossom 
break, Lily of World's Desire. 



Love's Body 67 

Mystic the soil thou hast chosen, precious and fit for 
thee : and though the body I love should crumble for 
thy sake into its clayey stuff, yet was it for thy flame, O 
Lily, that it was filled so full of wonder and made so in- 
tricately rich with exquisite thought. 

O passionate Lily ! I know thou art not Love's 
sole blossoming, but in these meadows of Life's grass, 
its unintelligible multitude, thou standest up and takest 
mine ignorant heart with joy. 

For thee, not for thy fruit, I offer praise, divine white 
fragrant flower ! — yet thou too bearest wholesome 
rounded fruit. 

Thy fruit is a new world, a world all-conscious of itself 
as a man, a woman, is self-conscious : a radiant singing 
world that is a God. 

Ah, passionate Love, without the men and women fit 
for thy fierce patient ultimate comradeship, and for its 
sake indifferent to the old-world standards of stationary 
and restricted love, that new world is not — nay, the un- 
folding of thy fiery flower delays! 



IX. For Comrades and Lovers 

/] S I go adown the lane that glimmers through the copse 
With the high elms reaching to the sky. 
As I go adown the lane in the November dusk. 
Trudging through the mire, under the first pale stars. 
Heavy-footed, stupid-hearted as I go 
Clothed in cares, a prey to pain — 
/ am thinking of a letter from my friend across the sea, 
A word or two of love I had not hoped for — 
When out above me looking, oiit towards me reaching. 
With wonderful immortal gaze and strong uplifting arms, 
I see One stand before me, nameless, near. 
Mayhap it is my friend, mayhap it is Another ; 
But my heart leaps quick with singing now, 
Now with open lips I cry, " Brother I Brother ! Brother ! " 
Across the sea and round the whole great Earth 
Into his arms I run. 

BY what name can I call you ? what word that will 
be faithful to us who are together spite of part- 
ings, to us who dare accept what Love shall bring — for 
He is greater than it all, and wise to choose and He hath 
made us fearless of its fear. Ah, He embraces all things, 
and the All speaks to my heart of you ! — by what name 
can I call you ? 

Comrade I 'Tis the word of the wind that carries the 



For Comrades and Lovers 6g 

awakening rain, and of the thrushes answering : the word 
that is the grip of a man's hand, the secret of a woman's 
face, heart-worship pouring its treasure out : the word 
of Love creative, whose very saying hf ts the lowest : 
the word your self has taught and teaches me, Comrade. 

COMRADE, we are but one another's for Love's 
high uses. 
Do we not stand at the beginning of one of God's 
adventures, and He eager to commence in us the creation 
of some new thing ? 

Alone I can do nothing, and without you, I am, as 
to this wonder, but alone — what do I say ? it is not I 
but He that stands delaying. 



WHEN I begin to guess at the issue of our Fellow- 
ship, saying, '* Do you not see ? It leads to 
this and this good thing, to this splendid achievement 
for us all ? " when I begin to find justifications and re- 
sults, then I lose hold ; our Fellowship supports me then 
no longer with everlasting arms and perfect counsel. 

But when once more I hear Its pure voice calling, 
when on mine eyes again I feel the light that frees their 
gaze from lingering on results ; I know it is not to accom- 
plish this or that that we are come together, but to abide 
in the Fellowship as members of Its body, letting Its 
joy course through our passion to accomplish Its high 
will. 

I know that to the soul, among all justifications, the 
Fellowship endures and satisfies until the end. 



70 The Great Companions 

IF it were not for my comrades how should I have 
found my way into the Fellowship ? for it was they 
that took my hands and drew me on to enter. 

And if I had not come into the Fellowship, never 
could I have won to knowledge of myself. 



"^^TOW why are you holding back?" said Love. 
xNI " Because," said the man, " there is no way." 

" What, httle bhnd fool," quoth Love, " are you our 
guide." 

So they proceed a little further till now 'tis the man 
that cries, " Why are you holding back, Companion ? see 
the way is clear ! " 

But Love rejoins again, " You know not whither you 
should go, were it not better to rely on him who knows ? " 

OLOVE ! Thou that perplexest us with double 
counsels, how shall we obey thee ? 

To-day, 'did I not hear thee saying, " Give thyself, 
body and soul, to this one that thou lovest : pledge thy 
whole self to him, to her ! " 

To-morrow thou tearest me away, thou refusest 
that I remain : thou breakest my vows, thou mockest me. 

" Come away out of thy cage," thou criest, " Come 
away ! " 

To-day, I pledge my soul because thou biddest me ; 
to-morrow I tear out my heart from the body where it 
dwells, because thou dost command, — ^Thou, for I am 
thy servant ! 

Haply I have misunderstood thee, didst thou, per- 



For Comrades and Lovers 71 

chance, say to me yesterday, " Do this and this to-day, 
promise not for to-morrow ? " 

To-day I think thou sayest, " Tease not thyself with 
yesterday, enough thy task ! " 

Ah, Love, I know thou art no wayward, no capricious 
wanton ! keep me within the compass of thine infinite 
words. 



JOIN not yourself with those that say, " I will not begin 
to love, for I see what Love involves, and am not 
able to ensue it." 

Say rather, ** O Love, I only know that thou hast 
bidden me do this little thing, and I care not now to 
what greater matter it may lead me ! " 

Fear Love, but rather be afraid that you may of your 
poor prudence and blind wisdom hinder Him in his 
creation. 

Nay, be not afraid, but behold, out of the bitter stress 
of your perplexity, Him Who of all the great Companions 
is most terrible, holy and pure. Maker and Breaker of 
every institution, even the institution of the mind of 
man. 

Whose fear is as the shuddering of the firmament, the 
faUing of the stars, the bowing of the pillars of the earth. 

Who is Love, Prime -mover, Reality, Upholder unto 
the end, the life of your soul. 

Who alone knoweth Hfe, and can show you, for His 
eyes see, and all things are present before Him for ever. 

Who alone can create in you that which is new, 
redeeming you from dismay and death-in-Hfe unto your 
place among the sons of God. 



72 The Great Companions 

Be not afraid : with omnipotent will and deft wonderful 
fingers He controls the wild caprices of desire. 



THEY had come nearer and more near, till they 
became afraid together, lest they shut out from 
one another all the stars. 

Her face, her hands, her presence sang to him, and he 
made answer like an instrument of strings, all glad, all 
sorrowful, passionate, unsatisfied as music, until he was 
afraid, afraid to feel the music of her presence. 

Then Love, the merciful One, the Almighty, the 
Terrible, made Himself seen standing beside them. 

The stars were in His windy hair that filled the 
Heavens and He was singing, — singing His master-song, 
Creation, that thrills in all things. 

Then in His presence they could bear the music. 

They were no more afraid, near though she stood 
beside him. 



PERPLEXED with eager hopes and v/anton fancies 
that say they are Love's sending, but, being 
come, are other than of Love, the lover prays that in the 
place of these he may behold the sacred Thing ; behold, 
as in Love's mirror, his beloved. 

That gazing, rapt and single, his longings may be 
changed to worship, all, all her spirit's food. 



For Comrades and Lovers 73 

I SAT in my porch way, with the odours of the night 
and of the body of the earth fragrant anew from the 
warm rain, steahng thro' all my senses to let loose 
the soul within me ; and all about, the windy sound 
of the dark trees. 

And as I sat there, listening to the divine bird, the hazel- 
haunting nightingale, whose song bubbled up in quick 
jets out of the joyous earth, my soul at large, I knew it 
was not only to his mate upon the nest in the thick 
leaves and dark he sang, pouring that music forth, but 
yet without his mate there close beside him he would 
not sing at all. 

O bird and brother, so possessed by song that spasm 
on spasm break the brave notes forth, — the untameable 
demonic passion of you and of the trees and of the earth's 
wild heart breaking up through your little pulsing throat, 
— again, again, until exhausted at last you are fallen 
silent ; yet once again after a pause to sing, the passion 
seizing you, and at intervals through all the night — 
because you love your mate, the Heart of the Earth 
has sung again through you the birth-song of creation ! 

Something possesses you, brown little brother, now 
for a few weeks in this our English May, seizes your 
body and makes you warble out its life into the ear of 
night, wherefore you know not, you nor I, sitting here 
in my porchway, sharing your song with you. 

But sure am I, Httle brother, this passion, that has 
turned your love to rapture and the flowers to perfume, 
wasting them with its ecstasy, is Life's own mystic 
meaning. 



74 The Great Companions 

WHAT can I say to my beloved for my heart is 
full ? O give me a word for her I love ! 

I have no word to bring but only her name, her name 
that she knoweth not until I speak it. 

I will carry the word that she hath not spoken, the 
syllables of her secret to her I love. 

For Love hath shown me, yea He hath told me what 
she knoweth not nor might ever guess. 

Because I love her He hath given me the word none 
knoweth but only I. 



I WOULD not ask, beloved, that the darkness pass 
thee by, that agony may forget thee, and the grief 
that breaketh the heart. 

I would not ask joy for thee only — joy and strength 
and delight — but that I too may share in the darkness, 
grief and pain ; may henceforward share for thy sake 
with all that, suffering, lives ; and that in thee our life 
may be fulfilled. 



WITH ruthless hand my lover comes. 
I have spread out before him all my gifts, I 
have clothed myself in graces. 

He glances through them, he stretches out his hand 
demanding what I have not. 

My clothing nor my body can hide me from my lover. 

With stern demand he comes : his word cuts to my 

heart and numbs my brain : he asks the impossible. 

I will not answer, no, I will keep silence biting my lips. 



For Comrades and Lovers 75 

(O treacherous heart, why will you cry so loud leaping to 
him?) 

With a knife my lover comes, through every barrier 
he cuts his way, to where within, in an enchanted slumber, 
I await his lips. 

He comes. 

All, all of mine he asks and takes and crushes under 
his feet, my lover. 

All, all, till there is nought. 

Hast thou not yet enough ? No, he has not enough, 
my lover ! 

He sees some hidden treasure that I know not, for its 
sake he will slay me. 

Barest thou, ha ! darest thou that, my lover ? 

Nay, if thou art my lover thou wilt not dare refuse it. 

It is thy part, and there is none but thee to take it, 
not God Himself, but thee. 

Ah, if thou slay me not, thou lovest not Me, the Me 
that can have birth only when this me dies — 

Thou lovest not the unborn ineffable Thing that only 
thou hast seen in me, that I have caught beckoning me 
from thine eyes — 

Thou lovest me not if thou refusest me ! 



THE cry of a soul unsatisfied : — 
" Was it only that near kiss thou asked of me, 
only that night together : only that embrace, only 
beloved, the begetting of our babe ? 

" Perhaps they were not a Httle, my love, but O they 
are not all ! " 



76 The Great Companions 

'' "VJOT to this lover or to that," I heard Love saying, 
XN " Not to this lover or that canst thou give all." 
But I, out of the faintness of a heart longing to spend 

itself, cried out, " Unless I can give all, O Love, I die ! " 
Love smiled and said, '* Little Heart, in sooth thou 

shalt give all, thou shalt give all ! 

" Yet to this lover or to that, nay, though they ask 

thy all, thou canst not give." 

OLOVE, what is this sharp thing that in my hands I 
carry since that I was with Thee ? 

I am afraid because of it, for it is power. 

Before, I was an impotent man needing on bonds, 
but now that Thou hast given me might to create and 
to destroy, I am afraid of hberty. 

Then guide me, give me wisdom ! 

I am in peril of slaying them I love, since Thou, O 
Love, wast with me : for Thou hast set me, mere creature 
that I am, here at the Gates of Paradise, and put into 
my hands this flaming sword. 

AWFUL, mysterious Love, why dost thou seal my 
Hps against him saying " No ! " so that if I 
should give, it would verily destroy me ; but he, if I 
give not, may perish of embittered hope. 

O, this way madness lies, madness or death, for to be 
near together, he demanding, I refusing, is too fierce for 
me to bear. 

Surely of such conjunction are phantom births, hatreds, 
horrors and unspeakable things, knots in the brain that 
life tugs ever tighter until the frayed thread breaks. 



For Comrades and Lovers 77 

Love, only thy fingers can untie the threads thy 
fingers tangled ! 

But if thou wilt not ? 

O, I will endure while thou endurest, terrible one, my 
Hfe. 

Who knows, who guesses what he can endure in Thee, 
obeying Thee ? 

WHEN I am sad, because there comes some heavy 
veil between us, because thou turn'st away from 
me the face I love, my words bring from thy lips no 
answer, my hands stretch out to thee and find thee not, 
— shall I reproach thee then ? Shall I rebel and beat 
myself against our parting ? Shall I, maddened with 
pain, turn on our love with bitter cursing wrath ? 

Nay, for thou turnest, hidest away from me for Love's 
own sake, and it is Love that holds my love aside and 
will not let me reach thee, — Love who enkindled me and 
thee together, and still is all the fire that warms our 
shrinking hearts. 

Nay, I will turn me then to Love himself, and he down 
in His purpose and await His will, shutting these eyes 
that strain so after thee, shutting these eyes in sleep, 
having given to Him thy name in keeping, — having with 
joyful anguish given thee back to Him who gave me thee, 
who loves thee alway. 

AND now when I am glad again, and hardly need 
reach out my hand to touch thee, — now when I 
am too near thee to need words, — fain am I to remember 
that high lesson learnt when thou seemed afar and I 
was sad. 



78 The Great Companions 

So that my hand may only touch thine for support 
and courage as a comrade's should ; that thou mayest 
never falter for my kiss, nor I for thine, upon these 
paths we tread ; that every word of thine may make me 
braver and more resolute to endure, and every thought 
of mine may arm thee more for battle. 

For further, further yet into the strife we'll press, 
aye heartening one another, giving each other scope and 
daring, urging each other forward fearless, coveting 
now for one another life and death. 



IT is the mystery of Lovers that they are to one 
another as the Gates of Paradise. 
By her, and by her only, can he enter, by him alone 
can she become enfranchised and find peace. 

Each to the other is the holy Gate that opens on 
Life's garden, yet is it not the Garden. 

Resting in their delight, content in one another, they 
stand but at the Gate, enjoying from afar where enter- 
ing, they should dwell. 



UNLESS the body of their Love were ever changing — 
changing into some vaster consciousness — I think 
that lovers could not long sustain their joy. 

Nor, if they were alone together, could the joy that 
pulses through them at the merest touch, be filled so 
rapturously full of universal meaning. 

The meeting of two lovers joins again some separated 
strand in the world circuit of electric hfe. 



For Comrades and Lovers 79 

I hear as it were the shout of innumerable comrades 
breaking across the barriers of division, to join together 
at the clasping of their hands. 

MY being rises from beneath the threshold of my 
consciousness, and overfloods its sill, filling 
full body and mind of me with passionate love of you, — 
a love too large for you and me, vast as the space in 
which the stars are floating and potent as the light. 

Then, comrade, what are we, that in us this godhead 
should thus be dwelling ? 

What are these bodies that, transmitting love to one 
another, become at last not ours, nor now for one another 
as before impassioned cravingly, but body of a tran- 
scending life that glows within their tissues, Ultimate 
Love, though as a Babe, indwelHng them ? 

WHEN we are come so near that we 'can see into 
each other's eyes, that we can feel life in one 
thrill together, and life has become worship, being one ; 
when out from these our selves we slip and lose them — 
comrade, it is not you I find, nor you do not clasp me : 
but you and I forgotten in that eternal moment, through 
one another's eyes beholding, through one another's 
flesh aware, and yet of one another heeding naught, 
being so wed together, — when we are come so near, our 
life is God. 



X. Liberty 

OUT of the mountain-rock perdurable there springs 
the ever-fleeting water of the rills ; and from the 
abiding earth, the stable trees rooted therein, are hewn 
the timbers of adventure. 

Even so, out of the mystical body wrought of the 
uttermost pledges of passion to continue undivided 
through eternity — out of a love perdurable as the rock, 
abiding as the earth, is hewn with agony, springs burst- 
ing up at last, that fleet adventurer, the sole free-footed 
and enfranchised one. Love's child. 

THEY two, voyagers, seated to-night perhaps for 
the last time before the old home fire. 

Change already about them — a new face — a new haunt- 
ing of mysterious presences — a great uncertainty stretch- 
ing before them like the sea, 

Whether of hfe or death or separation they know not. 

But here to-night, one heart together in the mystery, 
one true indissoluble heart. 

In the old home, by the fire — whither some new stran- 
ger comes to lead them now away together or apart, 

As once, a stranger, to take her hence, he came, — 

Before the old home fire, they two, voyagers. 



Liberty 8 1 



/IS fir si it said, still saith the soul, "/ dare;" 
Virtue and Prudence and Religion, yea 
Love, Friendship, Wisdom, all together say 
" Beware ! " 
But unto all the soul replies, " / dare.'' 

" Draw back ! Repent ! " they cry ; " Learn to obey ! 

Rebel not, venture not ! Thy foolish way 

Forswear.'' 

Humbly answers the soul and says, " I dare." 

" Yonder lies all disaster and dismay 

Dar'st thou to summon Madness and dim grey 

Despair ? " 

Solemnly, proudly saith the soul, " / dare. 

*' A spark of God is mixed into my clay. 
Destined I know not whither nor the way ; 
I dare 
Only to be mine own self everywhere." 



8 2 The Great Companions 

FEAR not, unless ye fear the inarticulate things, 
the love that claims no kisses, the wrath that 
strikes no blows ; for, since they have no body of their 
own, needs must they be the foes of life. 

The love that claims no kisses for itself can only leer 
and laugh at other kisses ; the wrath that strikes no 
blow, takes the good zest from other deeds : so these, 
that should have been birth-bringers, truth-compellers, 
are become cheats and body-snatchers, shadows that 
mock at things. 

They steal away love's confidence ; they hinder truth 
from counsel ; instead of comradeship they make a 
poor complacent caution, confident of success in still 
eluding Love's avowal. 

Fear them ! 

They fill the night air with insistent syllables of 
terror ; chant of the rebel atoms, the things unborn, 
that yet must be begotten of men or slay them — wild, 
dark deliria that pursue and mad impotent solitaries, and 
childless women struggling to refuse them birth ! — 

Fear them ! 

Against the barriers ye set up athwart their courses, 
they beat and break hosts of bewildered hearts. 

Fear them, or give them speech, these inarticulate 
things : fear them or give them being ! 



THEY said, " Beware lest you commit some crime or 
other." 
But I heard the sunshine saying : " O ye of Httle 
faith ! Beware how you refuse the chances of life m 
your fond worship of the devil ye call prudence ! " 



Liberty 8 3 

WHILE you harbour any of the fears, you have 
not come into the faith : whether it be of Hell- 
fire or of the workhouse, or of the loss of your beloved, 
or of your mental faculties, or of your reputation for 
being different from the rest, of disease or doubt or 
failure, — whichever grips you nighest : — while you har- 
bour any fear you have not found deliverance yet. 

Faith is not sure this body of its present dwelling will 
escape the peril : let it perish, there are plenty more in 
keeping ! 

Faith has a welcome for all comers : it makes good use 
of each encounter : it knows the secret of acceptance, 
keeping the attitude of the Soul in the midst of life. 

Faith is not anxious about rules and precedents : 
Give me Life, says Faith, and I will make you churches 
and worlds to the end of time, it was I who made all 
there are now ! 

Faith is not afraid of sins, devils and outlawed things, 
but walks its own way amid the wilds of temptation, 
untamed itself and fearless, making its own laws. 

It entertains those untamed things, and enjoys their 
hospitahty, moving in free fellowship among them, 
heedful of their indigenous knowledge, nourishing its 
soul upon their unspoiled beauty. 

For Faith, revelation is for ever beginning : the air 
is full of divine words, of new individual meanings for 
men and for every creature : 

It beholds the advent of the beginners, age after age, 
comet-like, flashing through the orderly systems, no 
less orderly than they, but of a vaster circle, struck 
through space from a more central centre, — carrying 
dismay as they come, unheralded, unwelcome, but with 
the joy of more heroic life full in their faces. 



84 The Great Companions 

ARE you impatient ? 0, I should be too. 
For I am very far from the place where I would 
be, the days go over and over, and I find myself again 
there where I was so long ago. 

For weeks together I lose sight of the landmarks of 
my journey : I am overtaken day after day by indiffer- 
ence and lassitude: I wander off into indignations and 
side-errands : I forget. 

Then presently, I remember again : the low hills break, 
and the peaks come into view : the fog clears away from 
my heart : I come into my way and confidence once 
again : 

For a moment I am impatient with my soul for 
allowing all that waste and wickedness, but in the 
back of my heart I know it is God's way with me, it is my 
way, the way that is sure and for me the quickest of 
all. 

I remember what I have seen and how Life takes its 
time — being born of Eternity — seeking its goal : and how 
when for a moment I have caught the vision of that 
goal, I have seen surely what a folly is impatience. 



BEWARE of me whiles I am seeking, for I am irrit- 
able and difficult in my solitude, and woe to the 
intruder ! 

But when I have found my joy, then eagerly I greet 

each comer if I may but share my wonder with him : 

— is it not his joy I have found equally with my own ? 

It is a fire, my wonder, and I am but a single piece of 

coal : I fear it will die out quickly if I do not gather 



Liberty 8 5 

other pieces together, communicating my delight to 
all — ah, then would it be royally replenished and fed ! 
Before I am enkindled, what can I have for fellow- 
ship ? it is better that I sit alone : but joy runs abroad 
with greetings till it has welcomed all. 

ONCE I was a man, and as a man I strove and 
doubted and boasted me ; but now I am become 
of God, I have put away my cares, and merrily I live 
as a particle of Deity. 

What He singeth I know not, but I feel in my pulses 
that He singeth : what He createth I know not, but in 
my flesh is the joy of His Creating : what He awaiteth 
I do not know, but in Him I endure. 

How should I tell His purpose ? Only in my body 
I know that His will, flowing through me for ever, is 
the tide and passion of Eternal Love. 

I WAS seeking a rare flower, and ever dissatisfied ; 
but now the mere grass itself — the mere wonderful 
innumerable living blades, the tall jointed stems and 
flowery spears, the grass of the field — is my joy all the day 
long. 

I was dazzled by some one divine possession, some 
sacred hope, some memory, task, comradeship, some 
brilliant single lily that I saw or sought, dimming all 
else into a trivial unimportance. 

But now my joy is in the myriad circumstances, the 
infinite commonplaces, the plentiful inimitable grass 
that is always full of flowers. 

It seemed then so very urgent that I should realize this 
or that, that I acknowledge the first value of some 



86 The Great Companions 

special thing, or man, or act, that I should be sure of 
some central point and pivoted on that : but to-day I 
move and live in worship : every atom of me is become 
articulate, and everywhere God is. 

I have awaked to find the meadows full of grass, the 
air of spirit, the hours of immortality. 

I perceive that to live is to be continually uttered of 
Love to all or any, to become all life, all joy ! 



XI. Vista 

ALOW, bleak sky — no cloud, no sun — and drawing 
down to night: a grey stubble-field that offers 
nothing but the blossoms of stunted ineffective feverfew : 
one idly watching the smoke of field-trash, piled together, 
burning : no light of sunset in the dull west, only out of 
the heavier east a damp uncertain wind. 

Whence art thou, blessed laughter, like a fire of bright 
flames consuming the cumbering grey stubble ? 

O blessed laughter, out of cares and questionings, 
and the miserable hfeless husks of us, what glee, what 
glee thou makest ! 

Some wind gathers our weary trash, our precious 
useless nothings, tossing them together : the spark breaks, 
and in the heap those separate nothings melt into white 
smoke and crackle together in flames, and give themselves 
to laughter ! 

Surely thou dwellest in God's breast, as fire in the 
heart of the Earth. 

Come then, divine destroyer of care, brother of tears 
and song ! 

Come shake our hearts together in thine irresistible 
chorus ! 

Come Holy Laughter ! 

87 



88 The Great Companions 

OUR road, straight and plain enough while it lasted, 
comes out presently upon the mountain-side, and 
of a sudden is at its end. 

Whither were we going so confidently that now we 
should be so much dismayed ? 

Here there is no one to advise with : we must make 
our own track across the heather : maybe, later on we 
shall take up again with the road, maybe never again. 

(Or you sit by the fire and the year dies out : you discard 
your former motives, you see they will not carry you 
into the new. 

You see that henceforward you can do nothing for 
the sake of money — that road ends here — neither can 
you do anything whose end is other men's approval, nor 
seek any justification whatsoever of those that you have 
heeded in the year gone by.) 

We have come out onto the mountain-side, we are 
loosened from motives and from tasks : for an hour — or 
for ever — the road has disappeared and the old claims 
have suddenly let us go : whither then shall we journey ? 

Do you not know, in your heart and across the heather, 
the beckoning of the fellowship, the bidding of your Soul ? 



UP from the road sweeps a wide field to the wood : 
through its stubble and over its rich soil a great 
wind blows into the night, a great wind shouting in the 
wood and hastening the low-hung tawny clouds. 

Great words it shouts unto the fields, the woods and the 
tempestuous sky, and to me taking the cart-track up 
the hill : I hear not only the clamour of dusky woods, but 
mingled with their rooky call, great words. 



Vista 89 



Brother blowing towards the night, what are the words 
of your challenge ? 

'Tis " Death ! " you shout and sing unto the woods 
and me : out of the unfathomed spaces the unknowable 
impulsion of your birth, " Death ! death ! " exulting, 
warning, to me, flying into the night you cry this word. 

Green among the dead stubble springs the three-foiled 
clover, already in the harrowed ground sleeps the new 
seed ; and in the tossing wood, darkening to the night, 
blithe answer make the birds among the branches : 
** Welcome to Death ! " they chirp and sing and quail 
not. 

Sometimes to us out of the untold deeps and spaces 
of our being, across our life, on toward these flying skies 
that are the skirts of dark mysterious night, — towards 
the unknown out of the deep unknown, the great wind 
shouts its message, fierce, exultant, strong, *' Death ! 
Death ! " it cries. 

Like branches in the gale, hke branches heavy with 
frail and fluttering leaves, bow all our thoughts before it. 

But even then, to that exultant storm, to that dark 
tyrannous, overwhelming storm, something in us — (some 
bird in the tossed branches, some three-foiled clover 
in the stubble-rows, some sleeping, waiting seed beneath 
the soil) — hearing the shout of Death awakes rejoicing 
and answers song with song. 



THAT pain should be, catching and closing fast the 
soul within its net ; that pain should be, instead 
of Hfe with its great outlook, its windy heights and vast 



90 The Great Companions 

horizons : that these black hours should be, sin, madness 
and decay, this irremediable twist of body and mind : 
this separateness, this injustice, this isolated satisfaction 
and contentment : — is there not here a menace ? 

Does this not shake our happiness, pointing at it as 
with ironic finger ? 

Can honest joy endure in a world where evil dwells ? 

Ay, can It ! 

Joy looks this dark thing in the eyes, this untamed 
thing it faces, and gazing in those wild dark eyes, joy 
sings ! 

Joy sings, and from Death's clutch leaps life at liberty : 
out to meet pain goes Love with hfe's enlargement : 
and over all disaster and injustice, sin, madness, separa- 
tion and complacence, joy ascends : — joy of some Life in 
whom all beings are, in whom all beings do themselves 
discover, — joy of some life in whom all life is joy. 



PETER, that wert the same age as my sorrow that 
is for ever young, twin playful brother of my 
bitter pain, would they had taken her and left thee, my 
comfort, my joy ! 

Kitten that thou wert, thou wast small enough for 
grief to let thee lie in my poor heart, and, since thy grey 
eyes saw not there its sickness, but saw there only love, 
thou wast its medicine. 

But thou art gone : only thy sad too conscious sister 
Sorrow remains to me, unfortunate. 

Nay then, I will not rebel : I will not unworthily be- 
moan me ! 



Vista 9 1 



Hadst thou stayed, thou hadst outgrown Her, and 
been playmate of Hers no longer, Puss Peter ! 

Ah now, if it were She indeed was gone from me, stolen 
away, and thou left in Her stead, then were I impover- 
ished ! then were I bereft ! 

For She is mine inalienable possession that Love 
has given me : I had rather lose thee, little playful joy, 
than my most sacred Sorrow. 



IF you say I must live for ever, show me then the 
immortal being that I am : for I am sure this dim 
body, these weary thoughts and tasks, this flickering 
self that is now one thing now another, cannot endure, 
savouring too much of mere mortahty. 

I would not go following on with these for ever, but 
if I might haply ascend into the great spaces of being, 
then would I Hve. 

When I remember some immortal fancy, beholding 
its divine abiding face, I would be such as it in beauty 
and in joy, for I can see that these must be immortal. 



THE barriers break, life opens all about us ; the 
faces grown so long familiar are become as words, 
each one with infinite meaning. 

The barriers break : respectability and the dull order 
of hfe grows suddenly thin, as a veil through which the 
eyes of Love are looking upon us ; intense as a wild 



92 The Great Companions 

dream they shine, but they are Love's eyes, not the 
eyes of Fear. 

The barriers break : the round of work and of doing 
important things gives way before me ; I see it is only a 
Hne attempting to enclose in its mere circle some stu- 
pendous thing, and now it is the Thing I see, no more the 
circle which has given way. 

Death intervenes : into the midst of our talking and 
our argument comes Death : the barriers break and let 
him in. 

He has been looking on us from among the stars and 
from between the leaves : he has been watching with 
eternal eyes amid the moments of our waking and our 
dreams. 

Now at last we behold him, and stars and leaves and 
ticking moments are as though they were not, for he is 
here. Death, who was always here. 

The barriers break, barriers that we clung to as our- 
selves : they break, the forms of thought, the bodies of 
of our beloved break, break : Hke dust in the rain they 
are dissolved and broken and lost. 

The barriers break to let loose that which they with- 
held ; break to let loose what they have kept so faithfully. 

The box is broken, and the fragrance of the nard 
spreads through the house like worship. 

The bond is broken : in his agony Love slowly rises 
up, a man bewildered. 

The body is broken — O body belov'd you are broken ! 
the beautiful hfe I know perishes and is done. 

But behold, as out of a seed that dies and breaks 
asunder, under the eyes of Love comes forth the new 
Hfe we call death, more beautiful and winged and free. 



Vista 9 3 



AH, what was that upon my face ? 
It was the wind blowing — -the wind blowing ! — 
but the wind, the wind is on the other side of the house. 
I do not think it was the wind. 

fooHsh me ! it was so like his breath here on my 
aching empty brow — his breath, half kiss, half laughter ! 

It must have been the wind, for he is dead — oh, oh, 
he could not come ! 

Bleak, horrible, mocking Life ! and you, lying wind 
with your caresses, I do not want you, you ! 

But him — how I want him ! 

He looks so Httle there, I could up-gather him into my 
arms and away, away ! 

Fire and earth shall not have thee, httle one — away» 
away ! 

But whither ? whither ? 

No, he is gone already, he might not wait me, he left 
me only this. . . . 

Gone — is he gone ? 

It does not seem to me that he is gone. 

Was he not here but now ? Did he not touch my 
hair, my cheek, my brow ? 

Who says it was the wind ? the wind is on the other 
side of the house ! . . . 

He loved the wind: perhaps it was the wind. 

Yes, yes ! the trees are moving there against the sky, 
and I am sure he moves them. 

1 know the sign, know what it is they mean, as though 
he speaks, as though he beckons with his hand to me. 

W^hat do I care on which side of the house the wind 
blows ? for he loved the blowing wind — Brother Wind, 
messenger ! . . , 



94 The Great Companions 

Dear, forgive me my denying ! 

At the first I knew it was you : but I was very tired 
and almost blind with unwept pain and I could not dare 
believe, for fear, for fear ! 

But now that you have kissed me in the wind, and 
made me your own sign against the edge of the sky, 
there where I could see it from my window, now they 
shall take away that Little Thing (Brother Wind says it 
to me) ; I will give my treasure up to pure fire and 
the enduring Earth, loving for ever Earth and Fire in 
you. . . . 

Oh, you are in the grass, a little yellow flower ; and 
you are in the sky where the winds blow ; and you are 
in the earth my feet kiss and the trees abide in ; in every- 
thing that comes and looks, in each I can see you. 

O my love, do not let me doubt ! 

Do not leave me to forget anything of this, forgetting 
all things else, — save only your breathing in the wind, 
your love, your look in all the welcome creatures ! 

Yes, and in the great vast lonely Night that broods 
over the trees, your presence, leaving no loneliness in 
the night for me, because your soul, that now goes free, 
is vaster, vaster, vaster ! 



NOW Time returns upon itself. 
I am grown small, smaller almost than when in 
embryo hidden I dwelled. 

I that had care of babes, myself now but a dim un- 
conscious babe, into the womb-Hfe of unconsciousness 
return, my Mother I return to Thee ! 



Vista 95 



No fear comes nigh me ; for about me close, Thy warm 
life presses, and it cherishes something that seems Thy 
very life in me, 

I am so little now, I am all Thee. 

Thy life is all about me. Thine immortal life : it is 
the love of these that cherish me, children of mine, 
helpers and presences, the dear sun at the window and 
the breeze : I love them all : I know them all as Thine : 
now all my life reveals they all are Thee. 

I am so small, I pass quite into dim forgetf ulness, into 
Thy love, my Mother, into Thee. 



THEY fade before me, faces and things and thoughts, 
blown and scattered along the morning gale of 
Death, dissipated and absorbed by the rising sun of 
Life : I see them flying and returning whence they came. 

With them goes all my world of thought, my body, 
whither I know not, save that it goes to Thee, Reality, 
immortal changeless, vital, the real Earth, whose thought 
am I, whose changeless thought am I. 

O to Thee, gale of the morning I give myself joyfully 
to be scattered : I die into thy beams, O rising Sun : O 
Earth I was born of Thee to return bearing messages to 
Thee! 

Forth didst thou send me to return. 

Deep under all my volatile changing thoughts I have 
known Thee solid serene, O Earth, O ultimate, abidine 
Me. 

Into Thee I return, I am ! 



96 The Great Companions 



Envoi. 

TJ/ORDS were worth nothing if words could say all : 
ever behind our singing is the silence out of which 
it broke. 

So too, behind this little book with its words of franchise, 
my enfranchisement remains untold. 

The trees swing in the gale and make music in it ; but 
in the Earth abiding they keep silence. 

So for you, beloved, abiding in your love, my heart 
keeps silence while I sing. 




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